Algebra with a Heron on the Cuyahoga River

The heron’s blended blue and gray
bespeaks a ruminant silence
as it covers and dyes
the dusk between day and night.

With its glow subdued,
that coat—a little cloud
furled in gray and blue—
alludes just as well

to the silken swells,
the tufts and wisps
of mists that moor
in dells their raveled sails.

And I cannot help but wonder
how adamant the heron is
in staking out its vertical,

and thus aligning it all—

like a painter’s clean and easy,
perfect, and thus otherworldly line,

with an ethereal, waiflike axis
running through both death and life,

since only in that way it knows
it may attain and consummate
the faultless—the arrant,
pure clarity and calm

in which alone the mind
touches the impeccable,

that lets one hear and see
what moves—even in the dark—

and where, down within,
it stirs and heaves,

even if but vaguely,
stillness and its script.

And in that faint
and paltry rift,

then the heron acts—
and brings

the netted charge and catch,
lifting it from its element
on a precise bill—

so that two

are once more one.