The Weight That Keeps You From Me

The heron comes to the pond almost daily. I suppose it will until the water freezes. I went in search of a poem to go with the picture I took this morning.

And found this evocative one by Polly Brown, a Massachusetts poet.

     Blue Heron Stone

"Because I could not bring back
     the blue heron
who watched us,
     out of the river's shadows,
          and then flew heavily away --

because I could not keep
     her yellow metal eye
          to remind me of fierceness --
I kept this stone. *

Blue-gray, like the heron,
     layered by millions of years in the sea
          and rounded
     by thousands of years in the river,

it is the circling clouds of a storm;
     it is all weathers, all calm, 

          all the weight that keeps you from me
and holds us to the earth."

* One of the small stones I still can't resist bringing home from our travels.