Druid's Altar
The Son

You can wait all day for the heron,
it's going to shock you anyway — clattering out
from the very alder-clump you most suspected
of harbouring what, at that time, in no way
resembled anything that could terrorize the leaves

or tear that yelp from your chest. It's necessary
to concentrate all day on the one thing,
but fail at it; for your greed to falter,
if only for an instant: say, when the cat jumps up
for the fly, or the phone goes, or that opalescent lustre

under the great magnolia tree seems suddenly grey,
unappetizing even, bringing to mind the dead,
who wait all day in their beds, but are not waiting
for anything really — the heron have already burst
from their tree. They have learned to live with it, as you must now.

Copyright © 2003 Lyndon Davies All rights reserved
from The Pterodactyl's Wing: Welsh World Poetry, edited by Richard Gwyn
Parthian Books/Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission