Please Use Caution When Opening the Overhead Bin
as Things May Have Shifted During Flight
The great blue heron stands in the shallow life-giving waters,
Where fish move and swim and have their being –
Before sustaining the heron in the form of lunch.
When the sun burns long for days uninterrupted
And the shallows begin to dry,
When the fish die off for lack of relief
And the pond recedes to stagnant algal blooms
Before cracking in thick sheets formed by the unrelenting heat
The great blue heron rises in flight.
Please use caution when opening the overhead bins
As things may have shifted during flight.
I took flight several times and found myself
Always returning to the same pond.
The familiarity of the slime and the stench were inescapable.
A silent promise, hanging in the air, that things would change
That people could grow and learn as if by accident,
That one day we simply cease to be whom we’ve always been.
I searched for new places to find sustenance
In the form of things that moved in harmony with my Self
Rising from the clear and shallow life-giving waters.
Please use caution when opening the overhead bins
As things may have shifted during flight.
“Baby, I love you. I have big plans for us. You are a queen.
Drink the cool, clear waters of my love as they wash over you
Unmooring you from your own life.”
“He beat me. He broke my nose. He took my shoes and my car keys from me.
I walked ten miles home barefoot at one o’clock in the morning.
He pulled me out of a chair by my hair; he threw me off the bed.”
Please use caution when opening the overhead bins
As things may have shifted during flight.
“I’m very disappointed she didn’t walk away the first time.
I thought she was stronger than that.”
Children learn what they live and grow to live what they’ve learned.
What did you teach her about walking away, as you stood at the stove
The next morning, the shadows of his handprints wrapping around your neck,
Unhidden, undiminished by the fragrance of blueberry pancakes cooking on the griddle?
What did you teach her every day before and since? Forty-four years
Of standing at that stove, interrupted only when he walked away,
But always, always, always welcoming him back?
Please use caution when opening the overhead bins
As things may have shifted during flight.
The great blue heron found new shallows of life-giving waters,
Where fish move and swim and have their being –
Before sustaining the heron in the form of lunch.
The sun warms the air and waters
As its reflection dances across the surface
Shimmering like so much glitter when the wind moves.
The rains come to refresh the waters
Filling the banks, feeding the reeds, sustaining life anew.
The great blue heron does not rise to flight.
Please use caution when opening the overhead bins
As things may have shifted during flight.
The greatest gift he ever gave me was the courage
And confidence, the self-assurance to leave if I choose.
The second is like it: to be a home I will never want to leave.
