Black Herons

Black Herons don't lose sight of themselves

in their navy colours or warlord crests

and chest plumage that is shaken

in panics of lust for little blue eggs 

that will be cultured and raised

with the same vampiric manners.

They don't apologise or 

have existential crises,

they don't experience shame,

they don't knead their hands

in desperate attempts to explain.

Cloaks thrust wide 

when they circle their night,

their umbrellas offer up no shelter

when it is they who are the rain.

These lampshades throw out 

no light, their cover to harpoon

the false safety of small fishes

in the stab of a wielded beak.

When did we become these Halloween birds,

our blades in the shadows.

I don't know if we should go on or turn back

when very little is what it seems, 

though we are watched by the Fever Trees

who in witness to these daylight machinations,

hiss their feathery leaves and tell their bark

to show us the distorted reflections

of all this in the winds and twists of our dreams.
 

Image is from Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flickr_-_Rainbirder_-_Black_Egret_(Egretta_ardesiaca).jpg