autumn morning drive
past ponds with gray whorls of mist
revealing secrets
like the blue heron
materializing there
at the edge of hope
Blue Heron in Mist. Elizabeth Castillo, San Diego. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
with thanks to the herons I see in several misty ponds as I drive to work – they lift my spirits immeasurably
There’s a scientific explanation
for the mist rising
from the glassy ponds
along my morning commute
then there’s poetry
the perceiving of
elemental transitions
autumnal ghosts rising
from the silver surface
the old heron
is still there by water’s edge
not wading
but watching
in the cool gray
in-betweenness
quite possibly studying me
an unnatural phenomenon
a recurring phantasm
passing through
its world
On the first required workday
before school begins
I drive the familiar backroads
once again
dew-drenched pastures
and old weatherboard barns
defy time
they are
their own world
then to my delight
a patch of tangled sunflowers
on the right
must have been growing here
all summer
I didn’t know
I think of Van Gogh
walking the rustic village
of Arles
up ahead, the pond
I scan it quickly
for the great blue heron
and there it is
at water’s edge
nearest the road
big and gray-blue
like a watercolor rendition
so perfect a pose
I feel light
like these are signs
that all will go well
with the work
lying before me
peace becomes strength
in my spirit
in my bones
on the second workday
I see it all again
even the heron
I can always face
the day ahead
whenever I see
the heron
I am so light
I could soar
then on the third day
without warning
orange signs on white gates
say the road is closed
I must detour
no passing the pond
no seeing heron
standing with elegiac grace
in the still water
although I know
it’s there
so on I fly
day after day
going out of my way
to get to where
I need to be
for now at least
I have the sunflowers
Vincent would say
it’s enough
keep painting the day
and the required work
beautiful
around the barriers
until they are gone
that is
the way of it
Coming home; the pond is just ahead but I can’t see it
Today I am not driving along the backroads and byways to work, for that work is over and done for a season. There are a number of things I will and won’t miss but this morning I am thinking only of the drive. It has taught me much about noticing. And composition. Twenty minutes of travel in the countryside imprints images in my mind; I study them over and over.
For one thing, as I watched the verdant lushness of grass and trees deepen and the crops in the field bursting forth in their furrows, I thought about spring being the season of green. But not only green. Besides the blossoming and blooming of pinks, yellows, and whites, there’s the flash of fiery cardinal red, the dusting of robin-breast orange, the electric pop of the bluebird, the soft, quivering brown of Rabbit. It’s all poetry to me. Stirring a nameless longing. Maybe just for life itself.
Robert Frost comes to mind:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
And then I contemplate how green is really a combination of two colors, yellow and blue. If nothing gold can stay, that leaves…blue.
Which is so utterly fitting, as nearly every morning on my drive to work this spring I’ve been awed by the sight of a great blue heron in a pond. I pass three ponds, actually, and in two there’ve been herons. I have learned to look for them and there they are. Standing tall, serene, peaceful, almost elegiac. Once a pair of them flew across the road ahead of me. Dazzling. Somewhere in the brush I know there’s a nest with baby blue herons. In all my life, I cannot recall even glimpsing great blue herons. This is the birdiest spring I have ever known.
The herons are part of me now, and I think on the layers of meaning. Typically self-reliance, self-determination, progress… these seem surface level, like the color green. There’s more than meets the eye. There’s blue, a color I don’t usually associate with this season. Now I do. As I play with blue in my mind, it carries me to shadows, a time of day when the golden hours are transitioning to evening, and a fleeting memory of youth. A time of preparation, maybe going to dinner, gathering with friends, celebrating… all this, flickering and cool like tree-shadows when the day is nearly done and the blue hour descends. Again, a nameless longing. A heron in a pond.
I have had a hard time writing during these last weeks of school. Partly due to demands on my time. And physical limitations. And my psyche. But none of these are the blue longing.
Nature knows infinitely more than I about creating…and that is the pull, for nothing gold can stay.
Here’s to the blue season.
“Creativity is the Blue Heron within us waiting to fly; through her imagination, all things become possible.”
—Nadia Janice Brown
Photo: Great Blue Heron on the Coast of Texas, McFaddin Beach. Texas State Library and Archives Commission. CC BY 2.0
On this final, frosty February morn, I wasn’t sure I had stamina enough to endure the day. For a short month, February can be so long. Teachers know.
I bundle up. I get in the car. I sigh. Could I manage to take half a day? Is it worth it? Probably not. A moment at a time, a moment at a time…
I drive. The empty fields seem sugarcoated with ice. I look for hawks. I am always looking for hawks. I don’t know why they lift my spirits so. They just do.
No hawks. No plump little goats in the goat pen by the stop sign, either. But something different in the glassy pond…
A great blue heron.
Symbol of self-determination, paragon of peace, harbinger of spring. Stoic, tall, unflinching. Stunning.
Just the shot of strength needed for the day.
Photo: Great Blue Heron at Sunset. Maxinux40k. CC BY-NC-SA
I stopped to take a picture of my beautiful heron but it’s not clear enough to post. I have to content myself with sharing this one instead; mine looked so like this.
lit bits and pieces 