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heron

POETRY

SOME BRIGHT MORNING

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read567 views

You open the new, free app on your iPhone:

a digital, audio library

of bird song and bird calls worldwide

courtesy of Cornell University –

algorithms, satellites, Tech Bros,

the Groves of Academe and philanthropy

in accidental constellation.

 

***

 

The mix of salt marsh and salt meadow stretches –

reedy and golden and green with sporadic

silver blue lagoons – nearly to Wales

across this expansive estuary.

‘Heron!’ you whisper, ‘Red Shank! Meadow Pipit!’

A beat. ‘Whimbrel! Little Egret! Brent Goose!’

A pause. ‘Skylark!’. And I can hear the bird –

above the gentle soughing of the wind –

distantly but actually, somewhere

unseen to the north-north west, its song

ascending in bright air.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

AUGUST MOONSCAPE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read554 views

A sturgeon moon is rising through wispy cloud,

making the waters of the bay a rippling,

molten orange. Out of sight, above the cliffs,

on pastureland bordered by oakwoods, a pair

of tawny owls is hunting amongst

the sleeping sheep, the owls’ long calls

trilling through the dark. A heron, with its

harsh cry, is crossing the moon’s fervid wake.

 

A small boat chugs into the bay, the searchlight

at its bow scoping the jutting rocks

the spring tide is covering. There is a sudden,

mechanical splutter, a muffled oath,

silence, the waves’ soft fall – then the tinkering

of metal. Meanwhile, the moon and the earth

have turned. Somewhere, like silvery submarines,

atlantic sturgeon lurk. On the far headland

is the white tower of a ruined windmill.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

HERONS IN THEIR HABITATS, LOVERS IN THEIR LIVES

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views

'The Heron Hunt', Eugene Fromentin 1820-1876

i

A heron – self-motivated, self-contained, aloof – stands,

between a potted phormium and a wooden Buddha,

on the roof of a houseboat on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam,

two metres or so from passing cyclists on the embankment

and the nervous tourists queuing for Anne Frank’s house.

ii

A heron – undisturbed, unconnected, elsewhere – perches securely

on a fallen oak beside a Cheshire pond near the motorway,

and the cargoes and the cars bound for the docks

slow almost imperceptibly as they pass.

iii

A heron wades at the water’s edge by Beaumaris pier: an accomplished,

stilt-walker’s strides – elegant, certain, considered, entertaining.

The setting sun casts our close shadows on the planking.

In the distance, cloud shadows cross Snowdonia.

And we say, as we always say, ‘This is so beautiful’:

its disparateness; the stillness of the air; the calm of the straits;

the prism of colours; the indifference of the heron…

which, suddenly and hugely, takes to the air, calling, calling…

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POETRY

WE PRISONERS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read2.9K views

A lark starting from the heather; a lamb

amazed by a heron; a hare gutted

at a turn in the road; the familiar path

obscured by fern, bramble, convolvulus:

the gallery in my head is open

all hours – by turns, thriving and derelict.

The sparrow in my chest, where my heart lay,

now flings itself at broken panes, now stills.

At the end of the pier, where steamships docked,

black-headed gulls and anglers watch and wait.

The steel-faced laughing man will read our stars.

Under the planking, the jelly fish glide.

My heart is a fist clenched in darkness,

a sea-anemone in coral waters.

 

 

 

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