This Morning Reading Carl Sandburg
This morning reading Carl Sandburg down
the river trail, reading Carl Sandburg and looking
for the big blue bird I saw on the other
day's walk by the gate house and dam, flooded
with mist this morning, I regretted my luck
was not like the day's when I came across
the great blue heron.
Then I came across the wading man who said HOWDY. I asked had he seen the heron today. He said, NOPE, NOT TODAY, IT'S EARLY YET, BUT I HAVE BEFORE, I CATCH FISH AND TOSS 'EM UP THERE ON THE BANK FOR HIM, HE COMES RIGHT UP TO ME CLOSER THAN YOU ARE NOW. I said, We have 'em like that in Central Park, they're so used to folks. Well, 'bye. I hope you catch some today. He said, I LIKE JUST BEIN' OUT HERE. As if he had the secret. Hey, have you ever seen— BEAUTIFUL, I'N'T IT? like he could read my mind. —morning mist like this before? NOT QUITE LIKE THIS, NOPE, NEVER HAVE. 'Bye now.
Then I sat on a stone to read by a tree.
The very next poem was number 26
about Fog going sudden like a cat on his haunches.
I laughed and looked up and
the mist and the man
were gone.
But on the way back, I thought that I felt
the eyes of that man and the mist
like a cat hidden somewhere
not too far from a bird.
James B. Nicola is a freelance stage director, playwright, composer, lyricist, and poet, with two hundred poems having appeared in publications including Tar River, the Texas Review, The Lyric, and Nimrod. His book Playing the Audience won a CHOICE Award. He also won the Dana Literary Award for poetry, was nominated for a Rhysling Award, and was a featured poet at the New Formalist in 2010. His children's musical, Chimes: A Christmas Vaudeville, premiered in Fairbanks, Alaska, where Santa Claus was in attendance on opening night. He reports the following: “The story in the poem is 100% true. Even the conversation, though condensed in the poem. Never ran into the man again—but I have seen the heron! It happened on the rail trail that opens at the Wachusett Reservoir in central Massachusetts.”