White Heron Rises Over Blackwater

I wonder
    what it is
        that I will accomplish
            today

if anything
    can be called
        that marvelous word.
            It won’t be

my kind of work,
    which is only putting
        words on a page,
            the pencil

haltingly calling up
    the light of the world,
        yet nothing appearing on paper
            half as bright

as the mockingbird’s
    verbal hilarity
        in the still unleafed shrub
            in the churchyard—

or the white heron
    rising
        over the swamp
            and the darkness,

his yellow eyes
    and broad wings wearing
        the light of the world
            in the light of the world—

ah yes, I see him.
    He is exactly
        the poem
            I wanted to write.