“The Hole-Nesters” by Leigha Comer

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “The Hole-Nesters” by Leigha Comer.


The Hole-Nesters

By Leigha Comer

Every swallow that flits past

Clips away a little part of me

And brings it gliding over

Muddy, yellowed fields

That are just barely crowning

Out of the afterbirth of spring,

Sodden and not so much bloody

As they are

A shaky, wet breath.

Strapped as I am

To my chair,

Bolstered by wheels

But still slow,

Fathomable,

Grounded,

Every near hit as they

Plummet towards the earth

Arrests me

Such that I’m not drilled

Further into the ground

But rather forced

To catch my breath

As one saw-wing

Loops forward in an aerial tumble

That spells out latitude

Across the sky.

It’s when I grip my wheels

And start to push myself

Out of the earth

And onto the pavement

That their acrobatics

Become fiercer still,

Dynamic,

Executing long strings of inversions

That nearly interrupt

My ascent.

Their speed means

They’re almost

Impossible to photograph,

And I think to myself,

What a gift.


Copyright © Leigha Comer

Leigha Comer is a writer and sociologist at Western University, where she studies the messy borderlands of care and policy. She lives with her husband, their two children, and their puffball of a Persian cat, Finley, in southwestern Ontario. Leigha loves non-human animals—especially the scrappy ones—and all things conservation. Her first serious piece of writing was a novel-length fanfic she wrote at age twelve, and it’s been touch and go ever since.


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