hidden blue heron

Before you bloom
and leaf out
let me write
and remember
how each morning
your bare branches
reminded me
of flight
Shaped as you were
like a blue heron
bent to pluck a fish from the
bare ground which was,
to complete the image,
forced to stand in for a still pond.
And as we three—
you, me, the hard bare ground,
Change as we will
in the season ahead—
Let’s one of us recall
that beneath all your full leaf glory
there is another glorious self—
hidden blue heron