Nature Poetry: Heron Suite

Note: This post is best read on a computer screen, but a phone’ll still work.

One day last year, my friend Tonya messaged our group chat with a lovely update: a heron had landed in front of their house to eat a fish. The rest of us were enchanted by the thought of it, but none more so than Tye, who’d misread the message and thought the heron had laughed, not landed, in Tonya’s yard.

An even better image, we agreed. “A heron laughed in my yard,” Tonya said. “Now everyone complete that poem.”

I did.

I.
A heron laughed out in my yard
and let loose the fish she was holding
It soared through the air and hit the ground hard
earning Heron a dreadful loud scolding

You’ve dropped your meal! You silly girl
And now my brow’s a-furrowing
You can’t get it back! Look at it curl
into the soil—it’s burrowing!

Ma Heron flapped once and took to the sky,
her muttering trailing behind her
Miss Heron just shrugged and let out a sigh
Wishing her mummy was kinder

Then flung herself sidelong upon the ground
To watch her ex-lunch in his toil
The fish, with a shovel, was digging around
And finding treasures in the soil

Up he came! With a jewel, all shining and bright
And pushed it toward the bird’s wing
He said I like laughing. And digging. And light!
But friendship’s my favorite thing. 

“A rhyming poem!” Tye responded when I sent it to the group. “I would have expected haiku!”

“Me too,” I said, and thought, Or something sad.

Then came another, no less improbable than the first.

II.
There once was a laughing blue heron
whose vegetable garden was barren
She said “Surely the fish will suffice for a dish”
but the fish said “No, my name is Darren”

I typed and edited these two poems quickly, between tasks at work, my mind going a million miles a minute. Life has been way too much, of late. For a long time. I keep moving, always moving, both because I must and because slowing down feels dangerous. This is both unsustainable and unwise, and it is what I’ve been doing.

A few days later, a moment of quiet found me anyway, and with it came crashing down the realities, feelings, and pain that my to-do-list-flight-mode-going-going-going strategy had been keeping at bay.

A third poem—a haiku—came, then. And so did the tears.

III.
Every day, the same impossible decision:
Will I survive? Or will I live?
The heron chooses laughter
and drops her hard-won fish.

In these bitter times, laughter and silliness can feel like a betrayal, an act of selfishness, a denial of the horrors unfolding all around us. But joy is not frivolous, nor is it irresponsible. It is resistance, and it is necessary.

And:

Breaking down is necessary, too. Weeping is important. Leaning on a friend and letting them lean on you is resistance. The sadness is no more shameful—and no less essential—than the joy. The heron, and we, can hold all of it.

*

Heron drawing by me, based on a photo by Takashi Miyazaki.

A version of this post originally appeared in small magic.