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 oar 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.