"Out on the Flats" by Leonard Nathan

For Matt, on his birthday.

1961 - 2004

Out on the flats, a heron still

as a hieroglyph carved

on the soft gray face of morning.

You asked, when I seemed far away,

what it meant but were gone

when I turned to you with an answer.

Nothing mysterious—hunger,

a taste for salt tides,

distance, and a gift of flight.

"Out on the Flats" by Leonard Nathan, from The Potato Eaters. © Orchises Press, 1998.