Blue Heron

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge from PoW Heather. She challenged us to have a conversation with nature! “Choose something from the natural world: an animal, insect, plant, rock, or whatever catches your attention. Address it directly and look at it with fresh eyes.”

I’ve been in coastal Maine all week, enjoying nature, especially the birds. I decided to write a poem about the Blue Heron and use an Irish poetry forms, the Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire — which is three syllable lines put into quatrains with an abab cdcd rhyme scheme.

I wrote it — and then felt like it didn’t do the heron justice. Today I wrote a Shakespearean sonnet. So — here are two, not one, poems for the beautiful blue heron. The first is the sonnet; the second is the Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire.

You pick your way along the craggy rock
You pause, you watch, you listen all the time
Is that a fish? Above, is that a hawk?
You freeze, become a statue – so sublime

But once a year you gather in a throng
You court with sticks, choose partner, build a nest
Together warm the eggs, hatch, raise the young
Then leave because alone is where you’re best

You curve your neck into an “S” and fly
Drag spindly legs behind you as you go
Broad wingspan, steady rhythm thrums the sky
Time to return to living life solo

To be alone does not make you forlorn
It means this is the life to which you’re born