Category: barn swallows

have mercy.

On By ©️K.T. 2025In agraria, barn swallows, birds, Death, dirt road chronicles, dying, Earthling, fauna, Free Palestine, Funerary, funerary portraiture, Gaza, Genocide, holocaust, july, kill lists, kin, Life and Death, maternity, mortality, Mother, Mother God, Motherhood, ornithology, outer rural, Palestine, ruralia, threshold, wildlife, ZionismLeave a comment

in mid-July, the summer-resident barn swallows who had successfully raised and launched four fledglings by June 23rd, 2025, attempted to raise a second brood;

while i am not absolutely sure if it was the same set of parents or another in the barn swallow community that utilized the nest — as there is a collective of more than a dozen swallows that visits and assists in feeding sometimes too — it is most likely they are the same parent pair;

this is the second summer the barn swallows have nested here in my barn — using last year’s well-constructed nest which they attached to one of the joists like a balcony cantilevered on a Chicago highrise;

i began leaving the overhead barn door open when i first noticed them circling and investigating the barn a few years back; and i was thrilled last year when they began construction of their nest — they were so very welcomed and wanted here — i now know to leave the barn door raised from mid May through July to give them access.

the first brood of four swallows,
not quite fledged, but stretching their wings in the safety of the barn, June 2025
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the reincarnation of sylvia plath

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Alchemy, barn swallows, flora, Gnostic, june, ki, kin, liminality, limineen, mystic, Persephone, plath, Poem, poeme, poet, poetry, Psychic, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Samsara, sylvia plath, witch, witchery, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment

this was the summer of
broken limbs on trees, animals — and men
this was the summer of
the fuck-it, no-good vegetable garden
this was the summer of
“not this year”, “but, maybe next,” — again
this was the summer of
the i-still-can’t-believe-she’s-dead birthday
this was the summer of
nesting swallows, wicked sparrows, and a fallen starling nestling, whom she fed, and kept in her pocket for future starlight
this was the summer of
hanging baskets heavy with rainbow gazanias and pots full of midnight black petunias — for balance — incessant dead-heading and concrete stains, a small price
this was the summer of
the blue serpent; of serpentine bracelets and of the serpent-printed dress — she to be photographed on this land with the flowers, the dog and the bird, like Frida
this was the summer of
first-realizing she may be the reincarnation of the spirit once-embodied in
Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath & her crystal gazing ball.
photo: Eric Stahlberg, 1954
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chosen by swallows, finally

On By ©️K.T. 2025In barn swallows, blue swallows, crone chronicles, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, dirt road chronicles, earthlings, fauna, howard nemerov, joy, june, kin, kinship, nature, outer rural, photograph, photography, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

an ascetic’s petitionary prayer, answered

for six consecutive summers, i’ve observed barn swallows enter and inspect the barn — diving and swooping in and out, perching and chattering wholly unbothered by my presence — but not until this, my sixth summer, did they finally deem worthy and decide to make their nest on a joist in this old, ramshackle barn

to experience their nesting is such a tender mercy in the time of remote, yet constant virtual witness and heartrage of genocide, of global horrors and famine — and of the daily unnatural disasters and unrelenting evidence of abrupt, irreversible climate breakdown and biodiversity/ecosystems collapse.

barn swallow nest under construction,
june 9, 2024
Audobon’s Birds of America, Popular Edition,
1950, Macmillan,


*from the author’s collection of vintage books of North American birds, wildlife and insects

O swallows, swallows, poems are not The point. Finding again the world, That is the point, where loveliness Adorns intelligible things 
Because the mind’s eye lit the sun.

Howard Nemerov

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