From At Home Poems. The Comstock Writers Group, 2016.

Hundreds of swallows, and each of two minds,
one settling lightly and easily onto the power line,

the other one hungry and flying away. All day
they’ll be at this, half of them filling the sky,

darting for insects, low over the pasture grass,
the other half an endless row of clothespins

tilted the same direction, into the wind,
all just alike, and each a stranger to the next.

Poem copyright Ted Kooser, used here with permission.

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