Today it is a swan:
                          The guide tells us
 these are in demand.
                          The glass is made

of red lead and potash                    
                          and the smashed bits
of crystal sinews
                          and decanter stoppers

crated over there—
                          she points—and shattered
on the stone wheel
                          rimmed with emery.

Aromas of stone and
                          fire. Deranged singing
from the grindstone,
                          and behind that

a mirror—my
                          daughters’ heads turned
away in it—garnering
                          grindstone and fire.

The glass-blower goes
                          to the furnace.
He takes a pole
                          from the earth’s

core: the earth’s core
                          is remembered in
the molten globe at
                          the end of it.

He shakes the pole
                          carefully to and fro.
He blows once. Twice.
                          His cheeks puff and

puff up: he is
                          a cherub at the very
edge of a cornice with
                          a mouthful of zephyrs—

sweet intrusions into
                          leaves and lace hems.
And now he lays
                          the rod on its spindle.

It is red. It is
                          ruddy and cooler.
It is cool now
                          and as clear as

the distances of this
                          county with its drumlins,
its herons, its closed-
                          in waterways on which

we saw this morning,
                          as we drove over
here, a mated pair
                          of swans. Such