White-Faced Heron

Today's gift and lesson: that amber gaze
encompassing, while ever attuned to
the desired particular; the slow lift and arc
of stilt legs a study in practical grace,
a condition of safe earthing on drowned rock;
the whole body a living architecture —
with each head-dip and fulcrumed step creating
new forms steeply shadowed by the low sun.
And the wings: lance-like plumes caping
soft humps of ashy grey with echoes of
the blue-grey shelf of cloud, beige-grey sand
riddled with seed-like tracks… I live in
another kind of time, have left before
the easeful, wind-caressing liftoff.