My uncle Hank fabricated herons.
A high school drama teacher whose heroine,
Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire,
informed his manners, he called the sky azure,
chose, in a strange ultimatum, college over marriage,
and when assailed with truth, preferred mirage.
Wait here while I retrieve from the attic …
or so he trailed off one afternoon, gowned in lilac
velour, freshwater pearls dripping ear to ear,
having seated me at his kitchen table where,
in the middle, a bowl of pink Depression glass,
etched with blooms on a vine, brimmed with the last
month’s unopened mail. On his way down
Hank held in both hands (dense
with rhinestones) a storm window. April
evenings after a heavy rain are when the opera
of Spring crescendos to the point of—well,
you’ll see. We walked through a gorge to the falls:
whitewater pummeled the stone shoulders
four or five stories down to the cold
olivine pool, where beige foam swirled, and mist,
rising in tilted sunlight, iridesced,
a curtain of diamonds. Holding the pane
with his left hand, clutching with the right a pine
twig and his skirt, Hank lowered into the water.
Your grandmother always wanted a mystical daughter.
He waded to the middle of the pool
and held the glass against the rainbow pall.
A holographic film, condensing on the glass, grew
into a horizontal stalagmite of raw
opalino. Hank turned the frame ninety degrees
and floated it on the surface. With the twig
he sculpted the plasm, carving a stilt for each leg,
scraping V’s for plumage, twisting up the neck,
and sharpening the pinpoint beak.
The heron, cocking its bill at the water, struck,
extracted and swallowed a minnow, slick
as it wriggled down to the viscera, where its tail-
fin slapped the belly’s inner wall until
the bird beat cellophane wings, melted into air
like paraffin, and the fish fell to its aquatic air.