The Cumulative Heron
In the fog, she hears the heron’s croak,
the ship’s horn,
some third sound.
Her maiden name begins with an S
not unlike the heron’s neck, curves she hides
in her signature.
Through binoculars is not the same heron
from the fishing boat,
from beneath the surface.
When they married, neither had seen
a great blue heron or they didn’t know they had
among other things.
She studied eloquence.
Now she puts stones in her mouth
to make a shore.
The heron walking like bamboo
is the heron hunkered in rain
is the ancient arrow.
As she drives home from the house of a dying friend
a heron flies obliquely across the road,
its shoulders hunched.
Of the 10,000 winds,
none troubles a feather
of the heron’s ruff.
She reads many poems in which
there are herons. When she looks up, a silence
rests most of its weight on one dark leg.
forthcoming in Many Mountains Moving
