Perhaps that Great Egret sometimes falters too
for all his deliberate pressing of those long black toes into the mud.

Is it anger there in that hunting, yellow eye?
Do you see yourself in that second before you strike through the water's surface?

And the nightmares? Do they shoot through your sleep too?
That heavy knife-bill swinging wildly for a moment as you wake, confused.

I can see as you see me, crouched here by the riverside, and that neither of us understands
quite what drives the rowing retreat of your angelic, white wings.

A feather dropped as you lit into the air and you must have seen, as you half-circled the sky,
that little something lost and carried by the river, flowing by, just out of my reach.