A quick scroll through the photos on my phone would let you know that I am fairly obsessed with birds. So when Christie Wyman, a true kindred spirit and fellow bird devotee, issued a “bird-related poem challenge…to anyone willing to fly along,” I knew I was in.
My contribution to Christie’s feather-filled roundup was inspired by a chance encounter earlier this summer.
The Heron
All at once, a heron
is standing
in the middle of the road.
Maybe she thought flecks
of mica in the pavement
were fish darting back
and forth in a creek.
But no quicksilver fish
swim in this endless
stream of asphalt.
Bewildered, she extends
her graceful neck
like a periscope,
searching.
Suddenly, an alarm
only she can hear
buzzes and
the moment is over.
Without a sound, her wings lift,
beat the air, and she is aloft,
her beak a compass needle
pointing toward true north.
© Catherine Flynn, 2018
Please be sure to visit Christie’s blog, Wondering and Wandering, for her “Birds of a Feather” Poetry Friday Roundup.
Reading to the Core 
Your poem placed us in the moment with you. Love “periscope” and “compass.” Creates that lonely traveler image as herons often are.
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Such powerful word choice and imagery in this poem! You’ve really captured the wonder of this moment and a deeper sense of its place in the larger scheme of things. Love it!
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There is an element of tension in this, and it was a relief when her alarm buzzed (I was expecting a car horn) and she so effortlessly set things to rights again. You craft a very clear picture in my mind!
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I love that speculation that mica flecks were fish. How frustrated the heron must have been to land on such an unforgiving, unsustaining bit of paved purgatory.
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There’s nothing like the buzz of an internal alarm. Glad she realized she had gone astray (and that you had a chance to see her up close and personal)!
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You’ve really captured the movements of a heron. I especially liked graceful neck/like a periscope and her beak a compass.
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I wonder if they really do think the mica is a fish. Lovely poem! Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
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I think I remember you shared this picture & event, and now the poem captures it beautifully, Catherine. I love your imagination about the thinking of that heron, about the mica possibility!
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I agree with Rebecca. You’ve perfectly captured the moment. Your sighting, noticing her, her alert, responding to the alarm and escape. This is a crisp poem… delivered with that relief at her safety at the end. I love it.
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“like a periscope searching” “her beak a compass needle pointing true north” Love these lines. Love this poem. Thanks for sharing, Catherine.
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Catherine, you captured the heron’s movements splendidly with lines like,
Without a sound, her wings lift,
beat the air, and she is aloft
and the use of the word bewildered.
I thought of that while watching a single plover flock to our beach mass today and then, take off gracefully into the air. Perhaps, that internal alarm is prevalent in other birds as well.
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Wow, Catherine–that is a fabulous piece of writing. It is immediate and yet rendered in slow-motion so that every frame of this 15-second movie is crystal-clear; you as observer are there but distant, the heron is a character but not caricatured, instead honored and respected. Wow. Move over, eagles and puffins!
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Thank you for bringing this moment to life and sharing it with us. It is just beautiful.
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