Still, they say its time is conditional, and from its view we are peripheral, our view of its beauty, a temporary jest. Black is the bird which stays high, black in the sun as it sets. Gold it will drop from its wings, gold you can catch from the light. Day falls to dark and regrets. Flight is eternal delight past the moon's silver respite.
Egrets arise in the dawn.
Egrets in passionate white, pawning the sun with their wings light on the marsh where fish sing, spawning mosquitoes in rings. I am happy, yet my heart remembers the pain. I sing for joy, yet my heart cries in sorrow. I climb the unsullied top of the towering hill, yet my feet slog through the deep mud of despair. I study the muqarnas, and Fatehpur Sikri, the Alhambra and the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia named, as my mother was named, for wisdom.