Heron standing<\/p>\n
steward overseeing<\/p>\n
beckons me near with ancient eyes<\/p>\n
great and blue<\/p>\n
like his name supplies<\/p>\n
the recognizable shapes of someone long laboring over thought<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I came to him with joy and the weight of questions from years past<\/p>\n
the hope of every birder to speak with this beast<\/p>\n
prehistoric and wise<\/p>\n
but i did not get to ask<\/p>\n
it was his turn to speak<\/p>\n
“Do you know why the land chokes?<\/p>\n
Why smokestacks billow and coral reefs die?”<\/p>\n
Taken aback, my gaze shattered like falling glass<\/p>\n
down his immovable spine<\/p>\n
He stabbed into the water and came up with<\/p>\n
Debris<\/p>\n
And set it down at my feet<\/p>\n
Not blaming me but<\/p>\n
Filled with decades of sorrow<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I felt obliterated<\/p>\n
for I love the ground which supports him and the<\/p>\n
sky which holds him aloft,<\/p>\n
but he asked of me still<\/p>\n
impossibly hard things<\/p>\n
he mourned<\/p>\n
“Why are the seas overfished?<\/p>\n
Why is enough never enough?<\/p>\n
Do you know why the ceaseless wheels of progress<\/p>\n
bowl over the unfortunate?”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I stood mouth agape<\/p>\n
Head shaking like I could erase the truth<\/p>\n
I asked through tears<\/p>\n
“What can be done?” but his long beak like deep nights stayed persistent in its slumber<\/p>\n
and I had no choice but to ask<\/p>\n
“Why does this happen?” I pleaded<\/p>\n
and the heron turned to me<\/p>\n
amber orbs unchanging<\/p>\n
“Humans think they’re better.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heron standing steward overseeing beckons me near with ancient eyes great and blue like his name supplies the recognizable shapes of someone long laboring over thought I came to him with joy and the weight of questions from years past the hope of every…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142598,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142223\/revisions\/142598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}