Even now I wing

Christian Century, Sept 21, 2004 by Jason Hickman

Even now I wing

   It stands in the water stilted
   head cocked like a hammer; faster
   than the eye it hooks a flash of gray and then
   a glimpse of silver quickly swallowed.
   I wish the canoe to silence,
   hold breath with the day a ruffle
   of air and feathers an explosion
   into grace and it's gone a hundred
   yards away. I begin the painstaking
   task of easing our and self across
   the surface towards this totem an avatar
   granting pure life, motion, a reason
   to be. It wings forth again in perfect
   silence and falls perched on the stillness
   that stretches its hand out over
   the water down deep into the mud the fish
   that are blind to the roots into me where
   even now I am winging

   with the blue heron.