Painting by Rod MacIver
Poem by Sam Hamill

“Although it is midsummer, the great blue heron holds darkest winter in its hunched shoulders,
those blue-burning-grey clouds rising over him like a storm on the pacific.

He stands in the black marsh, more monument than bird, a wizened prophet returned from a vanished mythology

He watches the hearts of things and does not move or speak, but when at last he flies, his great wings cover the darkening sky

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