What the Heron Knows

The heron stands in the shallows long enough
that the fish forget she is a danger.
This is not deception.
This is attention so complete
it becomes part of the water,
becomes what the water expects.

Attention is not passive.
It is the most patient form of hunger.

A poet wrote of grief
as the effort of carrying
something that used to carry you.
I have held that sentence for years—
not solving it,
just learning the weight of its true shape,
the way water learns a stone.

There is a kind of care
that asks nothing in return,
not because it is selfless
but because it is already whole:

the way rain falls on everything it finds,
the way the heron waits
without impatience,
the way this moment
holds what it holds
and lets it go.