By Cold Water

Heron Rookery Aubade

| 3 0 Heron Rookery Aubade Above the Bitterroot and where the Bitterroot swelled with sediment will run in early May, and where the river in the flood of ’47 chased bawling cows, rafts of uprooted willow, oncebridges , -roofs, -porchswings, with more volume than ever, yet quiet; above the alluvial scars, cobbles shaped like prehistoric eggs, grasses ruffed like crest-feathers by wind—high in the cottonwoods’ grasp of sky, there: the nests wide as the kitchen table a man sits at, upstream, writing his lover a note: there is nothing to say. He has ceased looking up to her, their rooms have become the place of neck-bent solitudes, of standing so long the feet tire. It is early enough in the day to see these things, early enough in the season: bright tapestry of boulders before the melt. Before the trees exhale their one green breath and the bird unfolds its wings—quiet as one who leaves his house this morning, thinking she’s still asleep. ...