Blue Heron
Your long neck twists itself
into a graceful question mark.
Tall as a man, your legs
carry you to waters where you feed.
Sloughs and ponds - even the
occasional drainage ditch.
You lend an elegance to the world.
You do not destroy or plunder,
but snack on fishy delights
taken up in your sword of a bill.
Blue heron, thrive.
Your estuaries and flood plains
are disappearing as civilization
populates the earth.
Pragmatists take the world as it is.
Lovers of animals sorrow
that one day you will be extinct.
What do you add to this world?
You are not a shopping mall
or housing development.
What you do is add grace
and beauty to our world,
making it a more beautiful
place to live.
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You remind me of the time when I was about eight or nine years old. We visited where my grandparents were working in a lumber camp in upper Michigan. While we were walking along a logging road carved out of the forest near the camp, we saw a Blue Heron hanging in a tree, dead. In those days, people would routinely shoot birds like that and then, not even eat them, but just hang them up show others that they had shot them. Thankfully most of that attitude has been changed except by poachers and other despicable people in our society.
Ron