A Poem about a Bird

Egret

Songs rise
from the white sky,
as the water ripples.
The sky turns to water
in their song.

White feathers rise and fall,
like the light,
which it hides behind.

The white sky
sets the teeming
of motion and friction aglow
like a candle.

As the white day fades,
motions slow
across a village.
As the white day fades —
and the village is in stillness,
it barely seems inhabited.
Night brings fear,
without the glimpse of brilliant day,
to distract us.
People huddle together,
in concentrated masses, out of sight,
as if to escape.

Beneath the water, the darkness turns
to a shade of royal blue
tinged with aquamarine.

The lotus hides
in the water.
The falling tree-flower circles
in the air.
they are like motion standing still.

Skylark, listen to the cries
of the geyser,
and dissolve in them.
Cry out, and dissolve in them,
sound hidden in sound!

In the water,
a stonefish lurks in a murky corner,
in water tinged black and green.
A fallen vine hides the stonefish.
Disease is hidden
almost anywhere.

The water is still,
tinted black and green.

In stillness it waits.