Deborah Moore
You may walk
alongside the canal
and its
directed water,
see a blue
heron
posted at the
opposite bank.
A blue heron
serves
as a marking
point—
only against
this stillness
can you know
how fast
the water moves
or you,
beside the
canal, how fast
you are moving.
The question of
direction presents itself.
Forward, you
answer yourself.
And the blue
heron turns forty-five
degrees
upriver, utterly changing
the
relationship of water flow
to swooped
neck, wing
to shoe, you to
current, as forward
becomes skewed,
you now going left
while still
somehow on the same path.
The canal
itself will run with
or without you
on its banks.
Your feet may
cause the sand
to shift where
it shouldn’t,
eroding the
edge
of the water
irrecoverably.
Ultimately, though,
your feet mean nothing,
will come to
nothing, will leave
no memory of
you
on this
country. Here
sand, canal,
and heron shift,
turning among
each other
in a particular
pattern
that does not
include you.
1.
Sometimes you
plan to see.
You go to a
known
habitat. You have your
hypotheses,
binoculars.
2.
Nothing can be
known
without
personal sightings.
The wings are
repainted
at each event
(the roseate
spoonbill
swooping).
You see your
own color.
3.
Glass bends
light.
Color comes,
and shape
distorts
itself. Bending wing.
4.
Which secrets
will be left?
Must every
hidden thing
be known, in
the end?
The seen bird
still
bothers to
hide.
5.
The bird you
see isn’t
the bird
itself. Nothing
is ever left as
it was.
Spoiled, stained,
tainted;
Encouraged, engendered, renewed.
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Last updated: September 9, 2002.