Great Egret
Will I ever say the bird’s name
without hearing an echo
of regret? As if I’d summoned her,
an egret materializes
in the shallows’ mirror:
tall, ethereal, a study in white,
while just under the surface
what she might seize
if she succumbed to hunger
darts away. What is she waiting for —
unmoved by a muskrat’s splash
or the red-wing that flares up
out of the cattails, even a skein
of her kind about to vanish
above the thinning trees.
In the wetland’s liminal light
I’m returned to the old story
of the swan maiden —
that bird-girl, wife, mother,
then bird again when she reclaimed
her feathered cloak, stolen
not by someone else
in the version I tell myself,
but by years. And years.
As long as it seems to take
the egret to turn
and fix her quizzical gaze
on me: earthbound,
snowy-haired,
this late, still wanting.