- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Poem
- Review Article: No
- Article Title: Herons at Dusk
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
This is the time of day when the light runs down the sky
like bluing and meets the bay, when whip-birds set acoustic
flares along the trees, when I’ll stand and listen to the yachts –
a sound as if cutlery were being replenished on table-tops;
but most of all when I love to watch the herons step along
the shore, how like tai chi performers they will step deftly,
easily into constantly reconfigured stances. I can see one
down by the mangroves now, moving. and then redoing
each step – as though it has become fastidious about how
to present the curve of is neck, a punctilio is must get right
before it will allow itself to stand twinned to its reflection.
Near the pier, another heron is holding its bill over the reeds
as purposeful as a seiner with a marlinespike before it
jabs·– then returns to its wire-drawn stance, as if all it must
achieve now is to lift and pull itself into the distance
like sail twine. When the herons quietly step they make
even the stilts’ and avocet’ neat stab along the sand
seem like slapstick; they make the routines of all who fish
along the shore at dusk seem over-weighted and vaudevillian.
And look! how they stand – at last – tilled to perfection.
Comments powered by CComment