You might think that these birds
move in silent ways always
based on their riverbank
stillness and slowness.
I practically admit all my guilt when I witness
this attention,
these practical saints, if saintliness were
eating frogs and fishes, even eggs, even
turtle eggs, and smaller birds. Pumpkinseed
lives of a beetle, you are gone bonbons.
I feel bad for thinking my bitter friend
has had a bit too much brown mud
on the tip of his nose. I feel bad
for wanting shorter versions
of beloved sci-fi movies
with certain characters
too ridiculous for kids,
science, or even SCUBA
punted up the ramp
to the spaceship
much earlier, in the opening
credits, Richard Dreyfus plots
especially, the beard especially
and then the voice,
and then the human
look that was stunned.
I feel bad for thinking
somebody else is right about what
he can see from his life under a rock,
the salamander head
in one claw, the salamander
tail in the other claw.
I think the edited versions
of everything were made bearable
by the things that are left out,
but the real possibilities
for love and understanding
are too gross or petty for most,
and these things can
be pieced together, in a silent way,
priorities not so out of whack,
priorities not so simultaneous
to make things sing with love.
But then I get with the herons on home ground
in the middle of the Great Meadow swamp
and hear them mutter and moan
as they take off and land from reedy water,
totally irritable birds, and I am consoled.
