Ardea Sacra

The heron sits waterside like an unsent letter,
peeling light from light.

Days layer water and poplar, wings pulling sky
through wind in a brief double exposure.

In a polymorphic spectacle, the bird changes its colour
to match the terrain through which it flies.

In this variant, the bird is drawing a white sketch of the water.
The two-pronged life splits, too, inside my own beating animal.

I stop and watch my familiar colours run down the page.
The crows are mawing; scoring the night black.

Are they, too, frightened of what they can’t see?

The night, like grief, startles the mundane
into crescendo; I lost you in a dark, dark place.

I want to pull you out of the dark and ask you—
Did you not see the path becoming a path?

There was a different path—
it swerved gently from the path you took,

warmed by your own dazzling sunlight
—did you not see it, the turn?

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