Two Cranes

​
Not really knowing the difference between herons and cranes,
that summer we named the two birds that came to Boehmke’s Cove
(which were almost surely not cranes but herons
because of the way they flew with their heads drawn in
close to their bodies, and for their topknot crests of feathers)
“Stephen Crane” and “Hart Crane.”  Stephen Crane
was, I think now, a Great Blue Heron who always stood
day after day at the edge of Boehmke’s Cove,
utterly silent as blue snow lightly falling
on a dreamy Swede—waiting, observing, almost impossible
to see at twilight.  Hart Crane was most surely
a Great Egret Heron, given to low croaking calls and sudden flights
across Thrushwood Lake at dawn or dusk, although
like Stephen, mateless.  That summer,
the air rift with the Iraq War and the coming elections,
for moments of calm, we’d often find ourselves
at the living room window, gazing at Stephen or Hart
who likewise stayed motionless, gazing down
into the rippling water to detect some tiny movement
they might stab at with their pencil point sharp beaks,
or not.  And sometimes, when our thoughts cleared,
we stepped back, we considered the sea and the sky,
we remembered the herons’ namesakes, the sad early deaths
of those young men who likewise saw through water. 
​
-first published in Ploughshares