They soar past my house, down the path of the riverway below. Three synchronized feathered skeletons, broad wings outstretched, doing a fly past just for me. I shout to my son and husband “The herons are back!!” but this news is drowned out by The News from the other side of the globe where Ukraine families and children are being picked off, the target of very different metal fliers.
The Herons land. One stands stalk still on the ice. The other two pick their way across the slippery glass on Fred Astaire stick legs, methodically positioning their delicate skeleton feet with each step. They both head for a patch of open water. Midmorning sun shines a spotlight on their destination. They reach it at the same time, but one snaps at the other, shooing him away. Shooed One removes himself down the river a few yards. He sulks, waiting like a puffed-up cartoon Joker. All he needs is the cigarette holder and a monocle. He deliberately faces the other direction, pretending not to need any food.
I sit at my kitchen window, watching the fishing Heron watching the patch of water. It stretches up tall and then hunches over, beak a hair’s breadth from the water’s surface, a perfectly balanced ice sculpture. Flashing, the head submerges and reappears, wriggling fish in its vise-like bill. As the bird tips his head, the fish slides down his gullet. The Hunter returns to his watch at the watery hole.
I call to my husband again to come look. He still can’t hear me over the war reports blaring from the TV. I should go watch, I should at least bear witness. But I still have yesterday’s news burned in my brain. The photo of a young woman in labour being carried on a stretcher out of the rubble of her destroyed home. A mother struggling to stay alive to give birth to her baby in a war zone. Neither survived.
The TV talkers drone, the bombs fall, the herons fish.
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