Around dawn a blue heron scythes great wings over our eaves and lands edging the pond to spear a free meal of blue gills. It brings back lines from a poem that caught the awkward blue-gray way herons skitter into reeds, the image skipping across years like distant radio waves whose signal tunes to this moment.
All words are anthropomorphic, little human-shaped gods who dream our immortality.
Like the black and white Ibis, a name can conjure nights thick with gardenia or a silk curtained barge cruising the luxuriant Nile. A crimson crowned bird sings in my garden, exotic as any canary, with trills more expensive than the trite penny tune my Field Guide notes for the House Finch's warble. Chirping from a picket fence, what finch renders best is desire to rise with the sun on blue-grey wings and stroke past domestic scenes whose terms circumscribe flight. Driving Home Late on A Starry Night Cedars crouch by the roadside as if waiting for my headlights to fade before they cross. High beams drill the silence as I speed on.