White Egret

THE spirit of the marshes stands
one leg folded under wing,
intent apparently on nothing,
like a frosty eremite
or the white ibis Egypt knew
along the emerald-lidded Nile
where princes hunted in the reeds
and later left their haunted souls
sealed in funerary bowls.

The egret’s bones are hollow ice,
he stands where air and water meet
bent like some refracted light.
The anvil chorus of the Irogs
titillates the evening air,
he watches with his third eyelid
the phosphorescence of the peat,
the minnows in their swallow flight.

No bubble breaks the glassy hour,
white lotuses engage his feet,
and brilliant cardinal swamp-flower
observes his fluoroscopic flight
which, like a papyrus scroll,
unrolls its paradisal wings,
befriends the hieroglyphic stars
to write beyond appointed things.