Dead Heron

It startles me to find it pinned to barbed wire
on the edge of some pasture in southwest Arkansas
so far from water it could only have been mistaken.
Its blue feathers lift in the wind;
its head bends sideways languidly, a sketch
from Audubon’s notebook. Nothing in the field
seems to welcome it.
.................................Back home, these birds
are ancestors gliding across the salt marsh
between cypress knots, spearing mullet
and spreading into the summer wind for their mates.
They move toward the sky with sincerity.

Here, there is no dignity in its decay—
ants eating its grace from inside out,
hornets and beetles burrowing into it.
Whatever ghost its tendons held in life
must surely find it shameful suspended on land,
dry and falling to earth piece by piece.

Only a visitor myself, it is
the least I can do to pry it down and keep it
with my gear until I can set it free to glide
on the first river I come to.

*Jack B. Bedell is an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature, a nationally-recognized literary journal, and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are What Passes for Love and At the Bonehouse, both published by Texas Review Press (a member of the Texas A&M Press Consortium) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press). His recent work appears in the Southern Review, Hudson Review, Connecticut Review, Paterson Literary Review, Texas Review, Southeast Review, and other journals. He and his wife Beth have two sons, Jack, Jr. and Samuel Eli, and one large Labrador, Mocha.