The Great Blue Heron
was as still as a hermit praying, so dusk-blue
that he seemed to be a shadow among shadows
of trees, where he stood at the edge of the brown
wood by the browning pond, behind the grey,
metal, mobile home where my nephew lived now
since his divorce, after his wife sold the house
he’d built and gave him nothing. The heron
looked an eccentric creature, with that kink
in his long noodle-neck and that dagger-shaped
head and beak. His flying thrilled us though, like
an acrobat: the sailing waves of his flight-path,
the rippling blades of wide wings. He was pure
drama – he could have declaimed Hamlet. My
nephew felt it, too. We named him Shakespeare.
He outclassed everything else, lifting the tone
of our existence, of our very seeing, our breathing.
The pond was the heron’s territory, but we stood
together: my nephew and I – and the heron at the edge
of sight. Then he flew again. His wings carried us,
their movement like the undulations of our losses.
*
Johanna Caton is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey in Kent, England. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and reviews, including Ekphrastic Review, Leaping Clear, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Amethyst Review, St Katherine Review, The Catholic Poetry Room, The Christian Century.