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Little Egret

SOME BRIGHT MORNING

By David SelzerOctober 29, 20251 Comment1 min read358 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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By David Selzer

OVER THE HILLS

By David SelzerOctober 29, 20251 Comment1 min read346 views

Vast banks, bluffs of clouds are moving steadily,

unerringly it seems, from the west – some

darkling with the makings of rain, others white

like the little egret that rises

from the sunlit reeds, and flies westwards, across

the wide estuary to Wales and a channel

of open water. Beyond is a range

of low hills, whose fields are bright with sunlight

or deep shadowed by chance clouds. Out of sight

are mountains, valleys, coastlines, a sea.

The little egret’s ancestors have travelled

aeons for just this imagined moment:

reflections passing in fleeting water –

a white bird, shaped, hulled, like a feathered

sailing clipper, and islands of cumulus.

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By David Selzer

THE LONGBOAT AND THE EGRET

By David SelzerJuly 17, 20251 Comment1 min read3.7K views

A low promontory of ragged rock divides

the narrow bay into two inlets.

In one, this early evening, at ebb tide

a little egret begins to wade and hunt.

In the other a dark blue longboat is launched

for the crew’s daily training session –

a unisex motley of mature persons.

The coxswain steers beyond the ancient rocks,

while the rowers pull for the horizon.

The blades of the oars are painted white.

The little egret steps, steps, and pierces.

A small flock of curlews flies overhead,

settles out of sight at the water’s edge

among the sounds of terns and oyster catchers.

The light begins to change, the sea darken.

There is still the white of the egret, and the oars

briefly raised, glistening.

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By David Selzer

THE EGRET AND THE PALM

By David SelzerSeptember 26, 20240 Comments1 min read1.3K views

The bird is thriving – in the narrow inlets

below the house – on small crustaceans

at low tides. The other, however,

though acclaimed by garden centres throughout

the northern hemisphere for its hardiness,

and placed with pride beside the driveway here,

is withering in the frequent, salty winds,

its fronds becoming a papery yellow.

Too tedious to tease out teacher-like

all the parables and allegories this

particular tree and this particular

animal might be made to feature in –

as if they were responsible for their lot.

So, Sister Egret, Brother Palm, although

your ancestors were originally

natives of more fragrant, southerly climes,

unlike mine, we are where we are.

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By David Selzer