A POEM FOR THE BLUE HERON
            Mary Oliver
                p. 1983*
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    1

Now the blue heron
wades the cold ponds
of November.

In the gray light his hunched shoulders
are also gray.

He finds scant food--a few
numbed breathers under
a rind of mud.

When the water he walks in begins
turning to fire, clutching itself to itself
like dark flames, hardening,
he remembers.

Winter.


    2

I do not remember who first said to me, if anyone did:
_Not_everything_is_possible_;
_some_things_are_impossible_,

and took my hand, kindly,
and led me back
from wherever I was.


    3

Toward evening
the heron lifts his long wings
leisurely and rows forward

into flight. He
has made his decision: the south
is swirling with clouds, but somewhere,
fibrous with leaves and swamplands,
is a cave he can hide in
and live.


    4

Now the woods are empty,
the ponds shine like blind eyes,
the wind is shouldering against
the black, wet
bones of the trees.

In a house down the road,
as though I had never seen these things--
leaves, the loose tons of water,
a bird with an eye like a full moon
deciding not to die, after all--
I sit out the long afternoons
drinking and talking;
I gather wood, kindling, paper; I make fire
after fire after fire.


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* from _American_Primitive_, 1983

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