“If you keep the faith I will exist
at the edge, where your vision joins
the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,
feet that go down into the mud where the truth is.”
– William Stafford (“Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron”)
In a dark corner of my cerebrum,
hangs a painting framed like a window
to a bright summer’s day, a Blue Heron
fishing from the steep concrete bank
of the Friant-Kern Canal, legs braced
at the edge of snowmelt snaking
through foothill orchards south –
faded black stenciled letters saying:
STAY ALIVE BY STAYING OUT.
Far from the noisy rookery in the tops
of sycamores above the bogs and frogs,
a tourist, an opportunist, this old will
adapts to all kinds of weather to outlive
our politics, our genius and mistakes –
as good a place as any to hang hope.
drycrikjournal 