Black Hills Audubon Society

Great-Billed Heron

Daintree River, Queensland, Australia

Dawn stretches
from a single color:
charcoal from balsam,
blue to the grace that draws
nineteen cervical vertebrae
in a liquid line.

Edges of wings that once
held back a longer sky
smooth crests of hills
and now in landing tuck
and fold the wind away.

He hides in the open.
Obvious. Evolved.
Waits like dignity,
disappears only to frogs,
fish. They see one leg
still and think rush
or reed:
nothing fearful.

Water whorls spin
slowly inside and out
behind the slight
obstruction of his leg.
Slack water, the canvas
of unsteady waver. Meander.
Swell. The slight wave curls,
small tongue. Fixed breath

then stab
stiletto and no splash.

by Bill Yake

Bill Yake is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Confluence (Radiolarian Press, 1995), Giving Critters Short Shrift (Radiolarian Press, 1996) and The Faces of Birds (Scatter Creek Press, 1998). His poetry has also been published in Wilderness Magazine, Fine Madness, Puerto del Sol, the Seattle Review, convolvulus, and several anthologies. He has poems pending in Willow Springs and Many Mountains Moving.

'Great-Billed Heron' was first published by Many Mountains Moving [a literary magazine out of Boulder, Colorado] and it took 1st place in the Shoreline Arts' Council's 1998 poetry contest.

Send your poetry to pelican@vei.net if you would like to publish on this page