Dangermond.org

Loca and I walked through the park this morning and noticed along the way, the things we haven’t noticed, there are ducklings everywhere! I couldn’t count how many. The pelicans and cormorants are gone, but one slick black cormorant had spread his wings in the middle of the lagoon and was drying off. All along the banks, I noticed the yellow-crowned night herons, Plenty of them. I was smiling for the first time and happy Arlene was at peace as she hasn’t enjoyed the park in so long.

A friend sent me a Mary Oliver poem in Arlene’s honor:

Heron Rises from the Dark Summer Pond

So heavy
is the long-necked, long bodied heron
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breeath
of happiness, and i think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself–
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn’t a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 8:42 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.