As I remember it, Swan Day began in a way that so many of my days begin. With the park and movement. The Storm had passed yet the ground and air were still soaked in a way that lingers in the North of England. Sound is dampened and brought close and made distant all at the same time. The park was empty of human life and teeming with every other kind that makes a living there. My feet found their way along familiar paths and through turns they know as well as my own contours.
My mind caught up with them and I was faced with running along the flooded path, near the allotments, towards the woods or over one of the bridges. I had splashed my way through the flood, fearing no depth of somatic experience days earlier and my feet took me over the beck. As I climbed the hill towards the pond and reached its brow, I fumbled with my phone to adjust the volume of the music I was listening to. Swan Day started here. After a decision made by my feet to go forwards not backwards. Into novelty not repetition.
My attention on a screen, buttons and volume I jumped with surprise as the sound of flying swans winged its way into my ears. That whoop whoop, swish, swish, whoosh sound. Felt as much as heard. Momentarily I wondered what sort of music I was listening to. Lifting my head I saw three young swans, a trickle of grey hanging on, flying directly over me, away from the pond. Beautiful. Majestic. Powerful. A trilogy of freedom ungoverned by thought, taking flight into their everpresent. My heart followed them and I was taken. So I jumped even higher when a fourth young swan flew over my head, so close that I could have reached up and touched it. The air moved under its beating wings and I felt it on my face and in my soul as the thrill flowed into every part of my being.
I was still. I watched. They continued. I was.
Coming back to myself after the flight I turned and ran towards the pond. This part of the park and the canal that follows its edge is a good place. Swans think so. There are two families who have made it their home. Two pairs of swans have each raised five and six cygnets to near maturity these past seasons. What a place! As I neared the pond I saw five more swans about the viewing platform. I ran past at a distance so as not to disturb them. I stopped. I was drawn. I paused. I pondered.
Slowly and gently and with peace in my heart, I moved closer and closer to where three stood and two bobbed. Innocent step by longing shuffle, I kept my eyes down and became part of their world. Until I was amongst them. These amazing creatures. The largest wild animal who shares this land. Their family with my family. I stood. Transfixed. While they preened. Pushing feathers this way and that way. Fluffing. Smoothing. Removing. Then onto another spot. We were still, together in motion. No words. No thoughts. No need for anything else. I was cleaned while they cleaned. They did not startle. They did not flee or fight. They accepted and in their acceptance I belonged. To the wild. To the wonderful. To the world.
After I do not know how long, I left them. To their day. With closed hands and a bow. I took a feather. For the moment. The memory. The acceptance and belonging.
Later that day, Swan Day continued. In a way that was no less astonishing but far less welcome to me. At least initially. My wife, who didn’t know of my encounter, told me she had seen a report on her social media that a Swan had been killed in the park. At the viewing platform. That no one knew how it had happened. Or why. I felt a little broken. A lot broken. I had been within this family just hours before and was accepted with such grace and generosity. Silent acceptance within. Now one of their number was no more.
The gulping, sinking sensation in my gullet remained all day. The ache and sadness. No anger. No need to know. No pursuit of anything. Just sadness. Shared sadness.
I worked. Darkness fell. I cooked. Empty night returned. I told my wife I wanted to go and see the Swan. She said social media told her it had been removed by a park ranger. I practised yoga and sorrow overtook me. I went home and took some flowers from a vase. Into the damp, windy, Northern shade I went. The park, I learnt, is not lit after hours. I had never been there in the dark. I walked along the same paths I had run along earlier. An eery blowing, stillness in which all was grey and black. The same expansive close sound. I was scared. My head was spinning around looking in all directions for something coming out of the gloom. I was scared of the dark and the unknown and the mindlessness of whatever had brought this moment to be.
I arrived at the pond. Expecting to see carnage. I did not. Instead I saw a serene sight. Six Swans swimming on the pond. Floating phantasms in the depth of the chilling wild. For the park and the pond and the canal and the swans were the wild in this moment. I was in their space. They were beautiful. So beautiful. At the viewing platform there were feathers but no other sign of what had happened. The Swans moved closer and remained on the water. I closed my hands and bowed again in sadness and companionship and shared knowing. We were still again. Still together. What remained of us. At the end of a day that saw flight and belonging and life and death. I placed the flowers where the feathers lay and took a moment of wordless reflection.
It matters not that this death was that of a Swan. Or that there are countless deaths, both expected and not, every day on earth. Or that there is no sense nor reason that we can fathom that renders death beyond our experience. Death is as necessary as life. There is no distinction where our words imagine one to be. Life and death are the same. What matters to me was that I was present, accepted and belonged for a pristine moment in the life and death that occurred on Swan Day. That I was witness to these moments of turning. That you are now witness too. That we are all, now and always, witness and present amidst this together.