First draft

Here's the first draft of a poem based on a Japanese folk tale. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I got the tale from a student a number of years ago along with several others. She was writing them down and giving them to me so she could practice English in the Writing Lab. I'm thinking of building a series of poems around them.

Swan

A farmer and his wife, barren past their youth

Find a young swan with hurt wing and take it home.

They place a box for a bed just inside their front door 

And feed it rice before they  retire,

Saddened by the fearful noise it made when they picked it up,

Glad to be able to help,

Glad to offer love.

In the morning on a rug inside their front door,

A teenage girl curls beside the empty box,

Sleeps fitfully dreaming, she says when she wakes,

Of water like a mirror in the morning sun

And a strange but lovely face she did not know

Staring up at her from below the water's surface

And dreaming, she says, of open space.

It's like falling up instead of down.

Father, she says, can I have more rice?

And, Mother, these clothes feel strange.

Can you show me how to wear them?

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