You may remember Margaret Hasse's wonderful poem "Being Still" from an earlier Pause for Beauty. It's the one that starts off, "She's a quiet clapper in the bell of the prairie. . ." I've always loved that opening line. Margaret kindly sent Heron Dance three more poems. Below the first. I'll publish the others over the next few months.

Audubon's The Birds Of America,
Color Plate 211 by Margaret Hasse

If you, too, dream to be born again
as a bird, wouldn’t you want to be
a great blue heron, rare vagrant
wintering in the Azores and coastal Spain,
snacking on shrimp while wading
on long, beautiful legs?

And if you loved your life as a human
who sheltered in a small house by a lake,
you could summer there again, nesting
in the white pine, fishing on the shore
in the blue Zen of stillness
when early morning ambers
the eastern sky.

- from Summoned, Nodin Press,
also reprinted in the anthology, Broad Wings, Long Legs:
a rookery of heron poems