The startled blue heron erupts out of its long-legged
inwardness and flies low to the pond over its
shadow. My eye flickers between its great sweep
of wing and its blurred mirror motion almost white
in the pond’s sky-shine. At the end of each wingbeat,
the long body dips toward its rising shadow. Now
the heron settles back down onto itself as far away
from me as the pond allows and I finish my walk half gangly,
half graceful thinking if I were a bird, this is how I’d fly.
~ Nils Peterson, “Blue Heron” from All the Marvelous Stuff (2019)
Notes: Poem via 3quarks Daily. Blue Heron photo: Pennington
