Capitulation

John Muro

Shoreline is shrinking and the

shuttered cottages are ghosted

by mists drifting upward from

channels of mud-softened

marsh like tawdry shrouds

that appear more pallid smudge

than luminous pearl and the frayed

tassels of common reeds, that

once rustled high in pale blue

air, are now arched in supplication

like martyrs leaning closer to

earth as all the world’s submerged

in a kind of deadfall between

seasons without the gift of sound

or movement, minding the air’s

prolonged undulations and the

deepening stillness of the water,

until the sudden sprawl of a

heron laboring to lift its bright

weight in stony silence and,

once air borne, watching its

avian form shape-shift back

into the abandoned light of

the back-water and I find myself

somewhere between awe

and surrender, asking for that

moment back, yet knowing

it, too, like a life, will be

erased and given up to ether.