The Art of Heronry

I am studying the art of heronry.

You are a master of patience.

You can wait on one leg,

A spearman poised an immobile,

Longer than I can wait on two (or three).

Your standing stillness cons the fish

Into disregarding you, as a dead branch

Or a boring relic from an old shipwreck.

You don’t need anyone to tell you

When the time is GO.

In that instant, you strike without delay,

Your purpose straight and swift and clean

As a stabbing spear, taking your prey.

I am relieved that even you

Have to work to get airborne,

Flapping and beating your great gray-blue wings.

When you are up, and stretch out your body,

You exhibit the whole history of flight.

You show yourself as the Feathered Serpent,

The one that grew wise enough

To make a home in another dimension.

I love the way you practice love.

You put on a gaudy show for your intended

Sprouting twin mating plumes.

When your gallantry prospers,

You are willing to work in intimate partnership.

I have seen you, ferrying twigs in your beak

To your mate in the frame of your nest in the trees.

High-flying bird of the heart,

I like your business arrangement

With the busy engineer of canals and dams;

Where the beaver builds, you build too.

Humans, who fly only in dreams and machines,

Know you as an ancient ally and exemplar.

You bright First Woman from the Earth in the Sky

Breaking her fall on wings spread like magic carpets

To dance a new Earth into being.

Egypt knows you, and the mystery of your rise

From the sexy serpent of Earth

To the master of air and of water.

Egypt calls you the ever living, the phoenix bird

Born again and again from the ashes of the old life,

Endlessly birthing your winged and shining self.

- from my collection Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Poems and Stories. Published by Excelsior Editions.

photo credit: Meredith Eastwood