HERON


My boat comes on fast around the bluffs
so by the time I see her fishing
and cut the engine, it is already too late
to apologize for the 21st Century.

Clearly I have offended the ancients and am shamed,
but as she packs her body under her wings
and lifts off, grark, she says blithely,
so that I take taunt, and flash, and yell aiiee.

And turn quickly. And, finding no witness,
audition a number of moot epistemological
tropes and unemployed kennings
like heron person and great blue human.

But as the pulley of the invisible starts
hauling her up and across the lake, grark
she calls again, and again, I yell back aiiee
and think badly of her as she alights

in the crown of a dead sycamore
and fluffs herself up with regal
emphasis, so I will understand
the human position in the higher order.

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