Great Blue Heron

Not really blue. Not really great, either:
just tall, and stilted, less beautiful
than striking. But still, I always stop.
I watch it the way I watch the work cranes
swinging over Cambridge, absurd
amidst the college spires, the chapels,
the old cloud of God. I watch the way
I watch the last choirboy trailing out
of King’s, the one who is unloved,
who stumbles on his robes, clutching
his grubby book of psalms. Night
after night, I stop my bike before
the same staggered scene: the slow lurch
of the bird toward the river, the boy
going still at the end of the line. I watch
as if I am not part of it. Or as if I can find
some sense in it, wandering these streets,
all this darkening December: I, who am both
and neither, another stranger in this land.

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Felicity Sheehy

Felicity Sheehy’s chapbook Losing the Farm (2021) won first place in the Munster Literature Centre’s international chapbook competition. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Yale Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. She has received an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Jane Martin Prize, and support from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Community of Writers.

Also by Felicity Sheehy (see all)

• Great Blue Heron - October 30, 2021
• Cleaning the Apartment - May 30, 2021

Author: Felicity Sheehy

Felicity Sheehy’s chapbook Losing the Farm (2021) won first place in the Munster Literature Centre’s international chapbook competition. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Yale Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. She has received an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Jane Martin Prize, and support from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Community of Writers. View all posts by Felicity Sheehy