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31 swallows over bellefonte Look at the birds, she points as they swoop and chirp over our town where every cornice refers to the past and anything that matters has already happened: seven governors, iron ore and the foundries that forged transcontinental railroads and a civil war, wire for the cables that strung Brooklyn’s bridge from its arches and stretched the wings of the Wright brothers’ flying machine— even Amelia Earhart stopped here for lunch, once. The swallows’ tails, sleek as Cadillac fins or boomerang coffee tables, black as pillbox hats at the wake for a slain head of state. Hear them singing? I ask. We lie on our backs on playground slides next to a brick school built in ’42. The toxic pie of a fallout shelter sign, faded, hangs by the gym door. They’re having fun! she cries. I know that whatever happens only happens here, now, in this town where a man guarded our big spring for weeks after 9/11, and a HAZMAT team raced to the mall to scrape white powder that turned out to be a breath mint, crushed under someone’s boot. Not that I can keep the sun from sliding behind Purdue Ridge, staining the clouds an uncanny orange. Good job, birds, she sings beside me, Good job. ...

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