The heron sits waterside like an unsent letter,
peeling light from light.
Days layer water and poplar, wings pulling sky
through wind in a brief double exposure.
In a polymorphic spectacle, the bird changes its colour
to match the terrain through which it flies.
In this variant, the bird is drawing a white sketch of the water.
The two-pronged life splits, too, inside my own beating animal.
I stop and watch my familiar colours run down the page.
The crows are mawing; scoring the night black,
Are they, too, frightened of what they can't see?
The night, like grief, startles the mundane
into crescendo; I lost you in a dark, dark place.
I want to pull you out of the dark and ask you—
Did you not see the path becoming a path?
There was a different path—
it swerved gently from the path you took,
warmed by your own dazzling sunlight
—did you not see it, the turn?
