Responsibility (And Other Scary Monsters)

A Heron Fishing on the Duck Pond

On a pond near a mall,

A heron; blue streaks of tinsel,

Crest of blue sapphires,

Eyes yellow flames;

Stranded on one leg.

No luck today, stoic master

Continues his hunt

Just past the Texaco station.

His spear to the edge

Of the axis as the fog

Sifts through the briny water.

Barely a blink

Upon the glassy surface.

The heron reflects

On you—his jailers—

And wonders why

You labeled him “endangered”

When for so long,

You, too, were butchered by eagles

And hunters and starvation—

When you were stranded on two sticks

With striped rags covering frigid corpses,

Skin crawling onto bones

Where muscles once resided

And hollow eyes, shaved head,

forearm tattooed like a license plate

All because you believed in the phrase

“Arbeit Macht Frei”

“Work makes you free.”

So you worked

And died

Until at last you were so hungry

That even eating would have killed you.

The heron’s life is simple:

He eats, he flies, he survives.

On a fishless pond,

Loomed by the shadow of a petrol station,

The heron spreads its wings

And flies away.