Her Voice
Lynn Hoggard

Death has taken her dignity.
Feathers rumpled,
the great blue heron
lies at the pond’s edge
on her back, claws clutching sky,
but her neck and head
twist into profile
as if knocked awry
by the force that killed her.

The living memory of her grace
settles across this lifeless form–
the pure elegance of her
rising long and smooth
on a six-foot span of wings,
the forbearance of her daylong
stand in the shallow water,
her slow, considered walk on stilts
around the quiet pond.
These dead and living images
merge to shape a keening cry
for the halted rhythms
of her life.

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