the swing, by Lyndsey Knight

The Swing, Unknown artist (Hagia Triada, Crete), ca.1450 -1300BC. Heraklion Archaeological Museum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

the swing 

beautiful
                 even without your head
you swing between two columns quite             
                 unable to speak, but still
you cannot not be called silent
                                                                          
we hear the                                                                          
                 song of your swinging,                          
move our head to your steady rhythm                       
                 back and forth, back and forth, 
swinging without purpose, without hope 
                or lack of it

birds linking earth and sky
                 attend to your gaiety of song
chirp of your beauty  - o beguiling goddess  
                 you will always be beautiful
clay between your toes
                 the world caught in your hair 

year after year 
                  further than the universe you swing
unfreezing hearts as time unfolds
                  sweet headless flower 
you will be speaking
                  and swinging all your life

swing on minoan sister
                  swing despite mankind,  
for the love of mankind 
                   and for the letting go 
of small things  

Lyndsey Knight 

Originally from Te Waipounamu, Lyndsey Knight now lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her short stories and poetry have been published in A Fine Line, Landfall, The Listener, The Kiwi Diary, and anthologised in More Than A Roof and the New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2020. Her work was long-listed for the 2024 Hedgehog Poetry Press ‘Little Black Book’ Poetry Pamphlet Competition and highly commended for the 2023 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. Her essays on Zen Buddhism and mental health have been published widely, and she has a special interest in hybrid works combining printmaking and poetry.