Egret (circa 2008)

Just knowing there are three egrets along the ride home is sufficient for now. I’m always afraid of the day their gangly whiteness, their long beaks breaking the air like a conductor’s baton will vanish leaving only the grass or no grass at all. Green grass bending away so I crane my neck to the right for that last glance of them, chalk white, twiny, quiet like an exclamation point read in a library eyes fixed on an indiscernible spot.

The city foams at the mouth and steals across the road home. The fields full of egret feasts shrink with every new voter looking for commutable distances and a garage for Explorers that seek no more than asphalt; and vinyl windows that watch out over the ebbing fields where the egrets bow their heads to the glistening world as the winds whistle Mozart and snatch at all that’s left.