Shoreline is shrinking and the
shuttered cottages are ghosted
by mists drifting upward from
channels of mud-softened
marsh like tawdry shrouds
that appear more pallid smudge
than luminous pearl and the frayed
tassels of common reeds, that
once rustled high in pale blue
air, are now arched in supplication
like martyrs leaning closer to
earth as all the world’s submerged
in a kind of deadfall between
seasons without the gift of sound
or movement, minding the air’s
prolonged undulations and the
deepening stillness of the water,
until the sudden sprawl of a
heron laboring to lift its bright
weight in stony silence and,
once air borne, watching its
avian form shape-shift back
into the abandoned light of
the back-water and I find myself
somewhere between awe
and surrender, asking for that
moment back, yet knowing
it, too, like a life, will be
erased and given up to ether.

First published in New Square (Official Publication of the Sancho Panza Literary Society), Volume 5, Issue 2 Spring 2023