Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Apparition (poem)
The Apparition
This heron was white.
Standing there, suddenly,
like an apparition of the departed,
only more beautiful.
Oblivious to me, to the lesser birds nearby,
it probed the shallows of the small lake
which had formed
after the latest rain.
(This was not a place where waters
flowed. It was a park, its occasional
puddle
turned into a pond.)
What could I call it but majestic?
Its height regal,
its composure complete,
a lesser god
drifted into our sphere.
It stood there,
fully occupied,
doing what it was constructed
to do,
bobbing and swallowing
in its one-pointed task,
as I was held, lost,
consumed in
its spreading flame.
Dorothy Walters
March 19, 2008
