Circles, To Heron and Egret
Chris Anderl
CHRIS ANDERL is a student of philosophy and religion in San Francisco. He grew up in Idaho and still returns to learn from nature in his childhood surroundings.
Circles
Turkey vultures wheeling
against a transparent-blue sky,
as if shadows
of one another turning
in opposite directions,
their dark forms
tracing out the celestial spheres
in measured geometry;
electrons spinning
in the atoms of their wings;
spinning birds, turning globe, whirling planets,
all churning in the original orbit
circling the imagination.
T o Heron and Egret
I.
I think I saw a Taoist
master in the blue heron
wading through the misty grass,
black tassel bobbing behind that keen gaze.
II.
Sly fisherman with the surgeon’s tongs
struggles with the squirming catch,
trying to parallel a flipping minnow
with a precision bill.
Crafty old bird
trolling the pond’s cement edge,
picking silver shiners
one by one
from the olive water,
a tipped-bill sip
to wash them down.
The Trumpeter