MOTHER AND SON Poem by Rutger Kopland

There is a pond somewhere, Ovid writes,
that once was a mother
"she melted away in tears", grieving
for her son, whom she thought was dead

yet he was alive - he had sought death
by jumping from a rock, but didn't fall,
in Ovid's words: "floating upon the air he
became a white-feathered swan".

These things happened then - sometimes
reality was so unbearable
that something impossible happened.

This is all we know: mother and son
reunited - you can imagine seeing a white swan
cradled by a pond and you wonder:
is the bird aware of the water's grief
and is the water aware who it cradles.