Heron

The great blue -

graceful and ungainly

all at once -

like a young girl just

before she discovers

she is beautiful.

She crosses the marsh -

willowy grasses, silver-green,

brushed back by the evening breeze -

coasts over open water,

her reflection feeling its way

between the wavery spears of pine,

the inverted cottage roofs.

She saunters down the wind,

dreamy and deliberate -

a calligraphy brush, surging,

confident in its intent -

and finally comes to rest -

not in the proffered bough

of the silver birch, not

on the jade-green hillock on the pond's

east bank - but there,

on the wooden gutter

of Mooney Fuel and Grain,

chipped and faded from

winters of sleet, summers of rain.

A Cape Cod stillness.

The cameras do not click,

the painters do not paint.