Great Blue Heron, and: Carp, and: A Catechism, and: Politics in the Country: A Letter to Dan Leidig

46 GREAT BLUE HERON Framed in my window your swash of slate grey stillness is a winter study of stones cobbling shore. Twilight & the river unravels its secrets in shallow threads rippling gold around your spindlelegs . Downriver sycamore & willow echo the grace of your neck arched to angle over pools. Soon darkness drapes a distance between us & fog rises in a dance of wings. —Jeff Daniel Marion CARP In the riverbed this April morning's reveille is a roil of humpbacked fins shoaling surface to flag a nesting campground. What rings from your bugle mouth is a call for the cavalry corps to rise and ride spawning dawn across these shores. —Jeff Daniel Marion A CATECHISM Have you sent your letters out into the world? I have sent my letters. Of what did you make them? Of voices. What did you take for voices? Earth, air, water & fire. Where did you get them? Earth from the dust of ancestors. Air from cold mountain winds. Water from an old woman's tin cup. Fire from the sun rising over my brother's grave. How long did you work on your letters? As many years as the pilgrim spent searching earth's secret name. Where did you send your letters? To the oaks & maples barren of leaves. What did you hear? Nothing. Nothing. Is that enough? It is our secret. —Jeff Daniel Marion 47 POLITICS IN THE COUNTRY: A LETTER TO DAN LEIDIG The crows are in caucus again: across the Holston they assemble, dark seeds of intent sown on October's wind. "A man needs something to aggravate him." Who is this speaking now among cornstalks pale and sere? No scarecrow straw bosses this field: vines speak, strung with vowels rich as harvest moons rising. "Reap, reap," cries the towhee." By the hermit's shack on the river sycamore, beech & maple raise their hands, a thousand golden votes waving to the waiting congregation. I wait for the water to level, feel the country's pulse in this river surging, study the blue distances of mountains rising, and cast my vote for you, old friend. —Jeff Daniel Marion 48 ...