“Heron,” “Liberty” and “Odyssey”

“Heron,” “Liberty” and “Odyssey”

“Heron,” “Liberty” and “Odyssey”

Heron

Great blue heron, white in high green,

folds on self, forward falls toward water,

clear space, wingspan wind-catch, rise in flight.

I am semi-trailer truck in someone else’s tender canoe

— steep banks through suburbs, six crows

from one bank to the other frenzy a hawk,

mud raccoon handprints,

duckweed green scum.

I will never return to this river.

Forty days and nights on

rising waters, they alone

kept the breath of life in

their nostrils across the face

of the seas. The raven, gone,

and then the low pigeon,

back, with green hope.

These words written

on back of page proving evolution,

going back to start, original sin

— as if the heron were showing off,

as if God seeded evil,

as if Jesus was a mutation,

as if pain meant,

as if anyone could make me understand anything.

Here, twenty years after heron's fall,

bird, instruct me, odd, tall, thin, long creature.

Explain cell division, tock-tick and falling to fly,

neither evil nor good.

Liberty

On Bedloe's Island, ducking

the tour, I stowed away

and, at night, when all

bodies had emptied out

of the body, found the

command deck where,

with a touch of a button,

I opened Lady Liberty’s

heavy copper eyes and I

could see where I was

going when, moments

later, I pushed ignition

for lift-off from the launch

pad, and we — statue

body and I, Lady and

I — were on our way to

space orbit where I

looked down on grim

Covid globe, social

distanced as I’d been

for months in that two-flat

on Paulina Street, this

copper-steel-iron angel

just another tin can, like

my ‘06 Scion, no magic

dust to sprinkle over the

good earth to disappear

the contagion and hug each

Jane and Joe with chaste

safety, no glad tidings to

bring of a savior born, no

kings with gifts for a

Gethsemane planet

yearning to breathe free.

Odyssey

Face of God, name

of God, child death

in every home,

Egyptian, Israelite, Canaanite

— let people go —

sea split, walled water,

tabernacle and gold god,

frogs, lice, hail,

locusts, boils,

blood, blood, blood,

ten commands,

doorposts, manna,

rock water,

hard heart,

seabed, stiff neck,

wilderness, mountaintop,

light rays, cloud,

fire, treaty

— hold still

and see salvation —

flight, arrival, exile,

name of God, face

of God,

— wander alpha to omega,

from end to start,

from freedom to slavery

and back —

breathe, breathe,

breathe,

milk-honey land,

pox, pox, pox,

slaves, victims,

bodies,

new world, new nation,

manifest, faith,

creation,

garden,

empty, open.

And, then,

again.

About the Author

Patrick T. Reardon

Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry, worked for 32 years as a Chicago Tribune reporter. He has published 14 books, including six poetry collections: Requiem for David, Darkness on the Face of the Deep, The Lost Tribes, Let the Baby Sleep, Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith, and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. His manuscript Every Marred Thing: A Time in America won the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for poetry collection from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans. Reardon’s poetry has appeared in America, Commonweal, Rhino, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry East, The Galway Review, Under a Warm Green Linden and other journals. His history book The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago was published in 2020 by Southern Illinois University Press.