The Egret

The Egret
081098

…Invisible from beneath the surface lens, he looks to be a floating feather-cloud above the reeds.
…Minnow and Molly’s silvered streaks play at his stick legs, standing indiscernible against the clear blue sky.
…With splayed feet he walks with the rhythm of a swaying breeze on the soft loam of wet sandy mud.
…Bejeweled golden-green eyes bulge forward in focus, his neck cocked and powerfully coiled.
…A slow motion parody of snow-white breast and polished dagger-beak blurs in a transition of ebony and ivory as he strikes.
…Balanced in a perfect niche they slide wiggling live down his long white neck, so quick that the others are seemingly unaware of the movement.
…He guards his territory rive with a gulling threat of flashing wing and a rushing parry.
…Suddenly, with a squawk and a short bound he is aloft on powerful pale ailerons, searching for a safe perch in the deepening dusk of late afternoon.
…Alone in the day’s hunting, they now flock together in radiant lines on a rose colored sky.
…Contemporaneously they sit with conversing cackle on the high branches of familiar swamp trees; starlit sentinels that wait the dawn as luminous orbs.