Swan Song

The winds have been wild, tearing branches, cracking trunks and driving the rain sideways against the window panes. It blew in something else, bizarrely, Mary Poppins-like. A swan. A swan on a smallish pond is a huge thing. We have a regular heron visitor, it's true, but he stands in the shallows at the edge, preferring to hide his size. The swan sat majestically in the centre, its mere presence enough to scatter the ducks. It wasn't fully grown, its Ugly Duckling plumage still visible, the greyish brown feathers adding to its general sense of despondency. You could tell it wasn't happy. It would periodically scramble inelegantly up the bank and wander round the grass as if looking for something, it's huge feet making squelchy indentations in the saturated ground. And then the wind changed.... and it left as suddenly as it had come.