Clouds short sheet the sunlight, 
I am folded into the crease.
Beneath the bridge, 
still waters reflect a younger sister,
lines etched with grief's needle, 
smoothed by water’s sepia tones.

I bend over the railing, 
look closer into the water,
tannin rich from maple and birch. 
Leaves that blazed with color in fall's final flight 
now blackened on the sand.
My leaning blocks the light, a silhouette seen.

The solstice has visited twice 
since I found you lying still in the woods. 
Days grow shorter 
while memory segues to
a fading photograph 
that has mercifully faded to gray. 

I think about the stars, 
how they filled the summer night.
How the light in eyes 
must go somewhere.
I have to believe it rises
to the last thing seen.

Along the bank a small boy has caught a fish.
You would have cast your line here, 
then eased the hook from the mouth,
slid the fish back into the water, watched 
as it wriggled away flashing silver.
Sometimes a hook snags and is harder to release.

It's often just a pause like this one 
in which we collect 
bits of ourselves  and each other 
that we imagined were lost;
like clouds that pocket the sun 
as they pass.
I am still here.

An invisible hand rips the sheet away,
gold coins spill 
from the mouth 
of the sky, 
scattering tongues of flame 
across the water.

Again and again, I find myself 
wrapped and unwrapped.
seen and unseen,
I paint my own sun glint in plein air, 
try to capture the light, 
just so.

                        

In the pooling darkness, where rushes line the bank,
it stands and stares.
I almost miss it, motionless as a royal guard,
a frippery of feathers on its crown.
Smokey blue greeting dusk, perched on spindly legs,
with bright amber eyes transfixed
at what lies just below the surface.

How often I have stood and stared,
rooted by indecision, wondering
what I've almost seen
or has just passed by, there-
at the very edge of vision.
The heron has no such hesitation;
with a lightning strike
it seizes what it seeks.

A guttural grawnk splits the hush
as the heron points its head,
lifts off and ascends, then tucks its neck;
each slow flap certain and true into a gray ice sky,
a fletching of legs trailing behind.