A Heron in Eastville Park, 2021

As shadows
scour the surface of the park
the shiver of minnows
keeps him waiting by the municipal lake,

austere
in tufted grey and white.
Swans steer
in twos, then clamber, dripping, onto concrete.

He lives
alone in the reedy dark
and never gives
himself away. He waits to make his mark

on the world:
a single, spreading ripple,
a hollow sound,
a drop of water from his glinting scalpel.

---

Mist

The sun just doesn’t want to try
to bring the day into the world;
for now it holds its muffled torchlight

low above a frozen field
where distant treetops briefly shiver
before dissolving into cold.

You are feeling all of this somewhere
since mist has covered half the country
and knowing this has brought you closer—

you see the same smeared light I see
which makes things seem more than they are.
A tree exists more vividly

inside this whited, almost-nowhere.
There’s only this, no here nor there,
and you amongst it, cloaked in weather.