A Writer’s Notebook: an old poem

This is an old poem. I’m still not happy with it. In retyping it here, I’ve made some small changes. Always tinkering.

Sunrise. A cold wind moves only
the surface of this pond. Down in that quiet, muddy mass,
small fish doze while above, a blue heron

stalks through the waters, more tai chi than hunting. Two old men
wade into the reedy far end, cast
lures, stand against the sky. I have come to this small pier

to write a poem. This heron knows
our purposes — mine, the old men’s — looks between the flashing
lines and my wooden rails in the weeds.

The heron unfurls his gray head like a new bamboo leaf,
leans toward the men, then
collapses his tube of a neck like a hook, his black beak low

near the water, as though to explain that
the fish are small and not worth catching. But I have come for
the small. And there’s always the sunrise.

Today, my wife and I went “day camping” out at the confluence of the Willamette and the Columbia. We watched the freighters and barges huff upstream while sport boats and jet skis zipped around tugs. But in between vessels the air and water were calm, the sky a cool blue and filled with migrating geese. At one point a heron soared in low over the lapping wake near the bank, but a dog chasing a tennis ball surprised it and it lifted at the moment it touched water, wheeled away and flew to the treeline on the opposite bank.

That heron reminded me of this poem, which I wrote several years ago in grad school and never did anything with. It still has problems, but I still enjoy the memory it.