Great Blue

Great Blue Heron photo by Barby Michel

I have written a number of poems featuring birds. Here’s one of them:

Great Blue

Dawn spread a sheet of satin on the glass

canal and lake and towpath in between.

My walk was interrupted by the scene

of his arrival from the marsh to grass.

I stopped stock still in case he wished to pass,

so I could watch him without being seen .

The wide splayed yellow fingers on the green…

How could such stick straw spindles ever last,

supporting elegance of gray blue girth?

Binoculars allowed him in my reach…

But yellow eyes at last discovered me.

A lift of neck and feather, shrug of mirth,

one blase glance and off the grainy beach,

into the air of swallowed memory.