081313 #copperhead It flies like liquid plumbing, with too many elbow joints, but only awkward for an instant on the ground. Once aloft, it bends like quiet water through the sky. It has poured itself into our world, leading with its goblet neck, redolent with long-forgotten time. It takes forever to disappear around the river bend; it only takes me seconds to start hearing myself recollect: Dude, I saw a heron. Or dude, you should have seen this heron. Or dude, this heron flew like *right past my head,* I swear to god I could almost have reached right out and touched it. The work of preparing to make something real by describing it to someone significant is somehow simultaneously noble and puerile. Why not build a scaffolding of two-by-fours to hold your perfect vision of a harvest moon? You know you'll fail, but your body has learned to inoculate itself against the terrifying emptiness of unadorned vision by automatically attempting something more opaque, more attainable than real. Because what good is real? The real is always disappearing. Around the bend.