October 17, 2024

Two blue herons
Downshift in the sun
To preen
Jurassic fluff out their green feathers and white
Safety pins 

Pressed aluminum 
Beaks drill down into canal muck and invisible fish
Cell phones and the Irish dead 

Dinosaur time in the swash 
A regular wash or 
De-Luxe wash 

A mother or father to one is a mother or father to everyone 

They cannot be imitated or repeated 

Quieter than Novocain they eat the Pterodactyl inside themselves for a thousand years of 
algae and eyeballs 

A flitch with a dark crown and new boots

*

An on-time arrival for scrubs
And chicks
Tucked between a Frito bag and the invasive dog fennel
Doublecheck their pockets for loose change
Car keys and vitamins

Yellow lint shuttled behind the new duckweed reappears in a pick-and-pick or dovetail frill

On the weekends you have to get here early 

Their knees
Are screwed together 
In a double samara  

Stethoscope necks that turn back to see 
What just occurred

A palm tree in New Jersey waits for its breakfast

The small ones are about the same size as my daughter and the big ones are about the same 
size as my son

They have pretty heads

A brand-new pair
Of eel skin cowboy boots
Pushing up skunk cabbage in the bottleneck
And high-gloss ooze  

They don’t live here like we live here 

Leaf blowers
Leave a semi-colon in the air 
A tick bites the head off a deer 

Thank God for drugs and Muslim boogie-woogie 

One heron lifts its leg out of the jacuzzi to vacuum up periwinkles and limpets and upgraded
medical waste

Their blood is plugged in to both sides of the lake 

A subspecies
Addicted to ducklings
Hummingbirds
And Instant Ramen 

*

A sea palm on the D&R canal
Walks on water
Walks on weird mud and liquid Tide
Moving from one foot to another beneath an empty
Wasp’s nest 

Papier Mache chest feathers
Drowning in green
Tea lattes  

Grocery cart left behind in the kudzu 

For a minute it looks like it’s going to rain but it doesn’t rain

Their eyes are maximum yellow
The center of a poached egg that can see into the future

I’m not connected to them in any meaningful way they are connected to each other and
even love each other

It feels good to get out on the water 

Their edges look like they’ve been cut from construction paper 

Thank God
For native plants and speed metal
A quick lunch of defused chicken stock
And pure undertow

When I see them it is usually by accident 

Ancient furniture
Dipped in Scotch-Guard and gelatin
Balanced on swizzle sticks 

The water is also pewter to pastel to gray-green with a calm surface under atmospheric 
pressure and traffic 

They bark at airplanes

Feathers that are more like fur than feathers
Slate to cornflower to absolute zero
Hearts open

The canoe rental is open until six

All they seem to say is don’t kill yourself

 
 
 

Painting by Jamie Bourgeois: “Saturated,” 2024, earth pigment oil paint on panel, discarded single-use plastic beads, naturally dyed canvas frame