The Swallows over High Pond

For a while, they fill the sky,
And then, look away, they’re gone,
Just when ducks swim out again.

Is this not coincidence?
Do swallows and ducks take turns
The way swallows and bats do,

Almost as if changing shifts,
The light too dim for swallows,
Then the bats pick up the slack,

Their turn to hunt down the bugs?
But this is anecdotal,
This one instance with the ducks.

Regular observations
Recorded night after night
Might establish a pattern,

But it’s highly unlikely.
The old battle of the mind
With the world—the mind leaps out

At the slightest possible
Observation of pattern,
Then the world does something else.