Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond

The poem

So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, always it is a surprise when her smoke-colored wings

open and she turns from the thick water, from the black sticks

of the summer pond, and slowly rises into the air and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time, I take the deep breath of happiness, and I think how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground, how improbable that ascension is not possible, though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself-- the muskrat and his lumpy lodge, the turtle, the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful that the summers are long and the ponds so dark and so many, and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing, this decision, this trailing of the long legs in the water, this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden gray-blue sheets of her wings strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing takes her in.