A Persistence of Cormorants
I live near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal,
a toxic and fetid tidal estuary from its salted
harbor mouth to its abrupt industrial end.
It is my pixel of wilderness in the city.
Tonight I heard the night heron quawk—
Thought it was a ghost. Flight is silence,
a glimpse of white on the wing, a memory
out of reach, the perfect shadow.
Cormorants hunt the same water by day
They do not perch. They paddle low
in the water, wings cupped to torso,
eyes up, sudden arch, minimal ripple.
Disappear into the murky green.
The plunging pursuit of prey propelled
by black webbed feet. What persistence
it must take to hunt in such dismal silt.
Poets know the tired metaphor of truths
that lie beneath the surface. Know the patient
wait to snatch a glimpse of glimmer. But
to swim, to hunt in our turbid psyches,
where madness lurks, or doubloons wait,
takes a persistence of cormorants.