Ellen Dooling Reynard spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, she is now retired and lives in Temecula, California. Her poetry has appeared in publications including Lighten Up On Line, Persimmon Tree, The Ekphrastic Review, Silver Blade, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Poetica Review. Her first chapbook, No Batteries Required, was published in 2021 by Yellow Arrow Press. Double Stream, a chapbook of ekphrastic poems based on the art of the French painter Paul Reynard, will be published in 2022 by The South Forty Press. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

The opening chord of Swan Lake
resonates through the room
while an old woman slouches
in her wheelchair, empty-eyed.
Her hands, long tapered fingers,
hang limp and forlorn from her wrists.

An oboe sings the opening melody's
lyric call. The woman's right hand
opens, palm up, then falls, inert, to her lap,
her head droops in dejection.

The caregiver raises her left hand to his lips
as the full orchestra swells in crescendo.
The woman looks up and lifts her arms,
fluid grace, sweeping gestures,
hands flutter like feathers in the wind,
head turned in regal profile, eyes alight,
as both arms rise above her head.

Her mighty wings
catch the wind current —
the swan is in flight.