Instructions From a Mute Swan

Image credit: Jo Turchet Photography

Jo Pendlebury, who runs Waterland, turned up one day with a swan in her passenger seat for all the world like it weren’t no thing. It transpires that juvenile swans regularly crash land* on the lanes and roads around the Water Park, thrown off by the turbulence generated when heat is emitted from variable land use (houses, fields, roads, lakes, rivers).

The precariousness of the young swan’s flight comes as a surprise from a species that rules the lake roost, bossing all-comers, including us swimmers into place around the water. Instructions from a Mute Swan was inspired by this encounter and thoughts of the advice it might have held forth as it travelled along with its human companion.

*the swan, incidentally, has made a full recovery.

Instructions From A Mute Swan

Take one large lake, split

into strips of shimmering light.

Gild with hard rain in early autumn,

a hail of freshwater pearls. Always try

to land with the full square weight

of your body, even when your bones are hollow

and turbulence bewilders. Or,

crash-land like you mean it.

Mate for life—aloof and wild,

unite pen and cob with all the doubt

of upended searching

for tubers in a lakebed.

Defend your young with extreme prejudice.

Make an egg to cherish, learn

to split white from yolk—transient

from faithful. Hold fast

to the lie that the finest songs will be sung

at the moment of your passing.

Take life like a feather, held in the world.

Repelling water.