flashquake Poetry

ANAHUAC
by Bradley Earle Hoge

My project had nothing to do with the birds, but they were there anyway, like entangled quantum particles as I drove the gravel roads of the Anahuac National wildlife refuge. I was there to collect soil and water samples for my dissertation, to look for protists from the last glacial advance. I wasn’t there to threaten the bittern hiding in the grass, its chin raised to attempt camouflage, but spotting it was one of my proudest moments in the field. I enjoyed the coots and moor hens, the purple gallinules and various ducks, the nutria sitting on mounds while alligators sunned nearby. I enjoyed the egrets and avocets, the cormorants and green herons. Watching harriers hover over fields was like seeing the place pristine. But the transcendent serendipity of my research was the presence of the Great Blue Herons, their miraculous accessions from the marshes and sloughs as I neared — amazed that they could separate from the water and so slowly levitate just feet from the marsh grass to land again a few hundred yards away, that I could watch them do this time and time again as I chased them along the roads. Each take-off and landing a graceful miracle, changing my spin, filling me with such delight. I made them my totem when I left the last time. For I wanted my connection to them to last beyond the limits of sight and memory, beyond the limitations of time and distance.

Copyright 2003 by Bradley Earle Hoge

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