Great Blue Heron
       

The bay is still for now,
like a conference table
undisturbed, opaque surfaces.
What meetings happen here?
I forget the bureaucracy
of seasons, inefficient
changing of the leaves.
I watch from across the water—
the yellow light of morning
switching on. In autumn,
the sun sorts through foliage,
a shuffling of papers on a desk,
and the river is a muddied
conversation. Leaf over leaf,
the day does its work
in the vacated offices
where only eelgrass grows,
green spools of tape,
and wild rice like pencils
stuck in the shallows.
If I am migratory, I go
to another cove like this.
These days, I read the shoreline
for the silver gleaming
of ideas, precise and streaking
thought of who I am.

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Copyright © 2021 Jehanne Dubrow All rights reserved
from River Styx
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission