When I think deeply about poetry and the literary devices used to convey complex thoughts in a very stylish fashion, one such poem that comes to mind is, ‘Swallowtails’ by Allan Peterson. I believe this poem jumps out at me due to its usage of personification throughout the poem, while also explaining some valuable lessons of life.

            To start, I observed the poem starts by exclaiming metaphors to times changing as they pass rapidly, in lines like, “He told them eventually time would run backwards in their hands, now empty where a crossbow went.” (Line 8-9). The author is giving a detail to how life could change for those in the ‘empire’ alluded to prior in the poem. I believe the author is trying to explain in this poem that we may not be often stuck in the same positions we are now, (the soldiers not needing a crossbow anymore would indicate such things as well, but there are more lines that reference such a thought). To further represent this logic, the author uses an analogy of waiting for time to change on Mexico Beach, while comparing it to all of the soldiers in the afterlife ‘waiting’ underground in China. The author in my opinion uses a majority of this poem as a metaphor to a rapid and always changing challenge in life.

            Finally, when I think about what message to take home when thinking about this poem, I cant help but think it is a great example of why not to stress about some things in life, as things can change quickly, and you might not always be in the same situation for long.

Swallowtails

BY ALLAN PETERSON

The Emperor thought of his heart as a water wheel

flooding the rice fields of all creation

and bloodied the water for a better harvest.

His warriors hoped for a life with wings.

His swallowtails wrote him the same lines

—the secret of life is a resurrected worm—

He told them eventually time would run backwards

in their hands, now empty where a crossbow went.

A theory works if it answers the exceptions.

The writing in the air of swallowtails,

from here to where the time changes at Mexico Beach,

is like writing all the armies of the afterlife

waiting underground in China.

We are attuned to shadows. They strafe the shore.

An osprey spins above the trees.

But when a large one stops suddenly above the house,

all the laws have been broken.

A theory that a moment is a warehouse where armies are stacked

to the ceiling, then one falls, is the last exception.

The osprey’s underside is streaked like a zebra swallowtail.

It misses the fish that dove out of the reach of shadows

as the lovers jumped into theirs from the Bay Bridge to Fort Walton.

If any should meet hovering over a milkweed or reflection,

they might say didn’t I know you in another life,

the kind of thing said often in Fort Walton or the Orient

and didn’t plum blossoms freeze in the Emperor’s courtyard.