Thursday, May 3, 2018

The Heron's Eye

Recently I felt muddled while painting -- distracted by restless bouts of altering this and that, to no avail -- there 
was nothing to do but quit the day.  So I drove off for a calming walk at our local wetland in Sugar Hollow Park
What fortune to spot a green heron then, patiently stalking minnows in the murky swamp. How I admired that bird's 
intense focus!  And standing there on the boardwalk, I felt the essence of Dan's "Master Heron."     
                                                                                                                                                        -- Suzanne                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

          
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                                     Master Heron
                       St. Marys fishing village,
                         coastal Georgia

 “Mud Scoggin” — in humble Georgia
     dialect that hides uncanny

 mastery each dusk you stalk
     the boat-dock within moments

 of the risen tide swelled ripe
     with squirming bream.  Perched

 on the edge of bobbing skiff, or
     tightroping the wires hooked

 to planks / until a silver murmur
     clouds your eyes & sets your

 rolling neck into a greenbrown
     hunch.  Your samurai beak,

  time after time, piercing
                                              the ocean’s heart!

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“Master Heron” first appeared in the Harvard Review
and later in Dimming Radiance: Poems & Prose 
Parables (Wind Publications, 2008). It will be included 
in Dan’s forthcoming volume Back to the Source: 
Selected Poems & Parables (San Francisco Bay 
Press, 2018).


2 comments:

  1. The wording "ocean's heart" brilliantly ends this poem. Also, the paintings are breathtaking.

    ReplyDelete