Great Blue Heron Takes Flight

Today I am missing nature. Today I am missing the birds.

The Great Blue

The wharf smells

of warm wood.

Thick Missouri laps

the wharf's rim.

We spy as

out of a sward

the blue heron kicks

off and flaps

away.

Or consider this great poem:

From the Shore

A lone gray bird,

Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.

-Carl Sandburg

For other excellent bird poems you need look no further than this link. But as for me, it does feel like a Carl Sandburg day.