Heron at Night

by Esther Van Dyke

Bright beads of headlights,
pulled tight along the neck of the night,
squeeze the breath of dusk away.
The railing of the bridge etches a ridge into our elbows,
its sharp iron smell sticky against our skin.
Our shadows rush again and again
beyond the concrete edge,
pushed by the repeating headlights
to fall into the stream below.
Beneath the layered darkness,
a heron becomes visible,
its gray-green pinions
shining in the muted glow of the moon.
Unfolding,
its impossible joints rising,
it drapes silvered wings for a moment against the rock,
then rushes upwards in angles
too strange for light.

…

The sway of traffic
illuminates the dogwood blossoms.
And the empty space where the heron was,
is dark without its feathered light.

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Esther is a writer and poet living in downtown Baltimore. The city, as a place of beauty and sorrow, shapes her writing and brings humanity and nature into focus. Her poetry has been published in Vita Poetica and Ekstasis magazine.