Winter Heron

Winter Heron Winter is a heron In a land where there is only enough snow For a dusting of white Belly feathers under cloudy wings. His movements are spare and rationed. He knows that strength is not freely given In the Silent Season: It must be hoarded, or taken with violence, Speared and swallowed ice-cold. Every year I forget how to come into his stillness, He who dances with rain in his feet. I must let go of green leaves that have become dust. We stand in damp-feathered grayness, Wrapped in ruffled water that he gathers To himself as he calls in his power on the wind. Through shifting mist of heron-shape His eye encircles me: I remember now, and begin at once To sleep and to fly. —Lorena Babcock What This Road Holds Is a long, long walk in the childhood of April The surprise of pink trillium and a Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Spring warbling creeks and the birds in the redbud, Wet feet and dry throats and the burns on our noses. And a ten-mile excursion on cross-country skis, The buck-toothed beavers watching us move From under or next to their August-built dams, With the deer in the woods, probably up in that thicket On the prickly point overlooking the lake. And a run for no money, just a shabby red sweatshirt And a pair of no longer white Nike sneakers, With the air so clear we could see to Virginia If we wanted to. And that time when we pulled off on the way back from Grafton And climbed tö the rifle range where you reverently showed me Without firing the gun how to take careful aim While holding my breath with support from the railing And deliver a shot to the heart of the bulls-eye And around a white church with a graveyard beside it And on to the lake bed that's still full of géodes And arrowheads and boat ribs and dinosaur bones. It's a road wrapping around us and folding the distance, Wrapping and wrapping and wrapping the hills. —Barbara Smith 51 ...