Introduction: poetry and herons -- Flotsam and jetsam -- My father contemplates his life -- Wanting sumptuous heavens -- Midnight kayak ride -- Like a prayer -- Six blue herons -- The birders at Miesville Ravine -- What is not seen -- A dangerous place -- In the audiologist's office -- Kayak -- Blue wingspan above the downtown pond -- Lighting out way -- Epistle from a migrating heron -- Evening rituals -- Taking the back roads home -- Color-plate 161-Audubon's the birds of America -- Silas fishing 1967 -- Rise -- The unfolding -- There was that egret by the side of the road -- Consultation -- The great blue heron's return of the North -- Blue heron -- Translation -- Torpor -- First Kansas April -- Hellish hot day in the anthropocene -- The moon a heron -- Letter to an English teacher -- What the light leaves -- Great blue on the Kinni -- Only by happenstance -- Near herons -- Silence of the blue heron -- The rise of the heron -- Great blue -- From equivalents -- A question for you -- Between the Earth and sky -- Longing: a fable -- On the Cannon River -- Night birds -- Two alligators -- Birds of America -- Only now -- Rookery -- The lake -- Backwater -- Fisherman -- Big Alden Lake -- Bonfire -- Fishing -- Migration path -- Blue Heron Cinquain -- It begins.