Egrets on Route 41

When we get the news

we can do nothing about we are

standing on the side of the road

watching them.

Heat and heat. Black glass mud.

Burnt branches. A sensation

at the neck can reach everywhere.

Once hunted for their plumes,

wisped, glowing, white,

all the way to the brink. There

was one hunter who quit.

Over and over he saw the heads

the necks of them, naked,

hanging out of the trees by the

hundreds. Nest after nest,

featherless. I am done forever,

he said. He was not

the only one who saw it.

On this road before it was

a road. Six of them heave

up out of the watery prairie.

Wing flap, white broken

open in flight blur.

Hot, hot fields of water.

The rain holds.

I am listening so closely

to this scene

I am making up sounds.

Heat, wide open time.

One kind can reach

everywhere. It goes on.

It goes on. It does not go.