quiescence
July 28, 2014 § 17 Comments
silent heron
waits for mist to rise –
statue becomes hunter
~
Image courtesy Stan Malcolm
Changing Skin: modern haiku and other stories
Haiku, stories and unfinished business…
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Changing Skin: modern haiku and other stories 
Who has already observed a heron will recognize the “hieratic” pose of this beautiful bird in you lines, “silent statue” before hunting… very beautiful descriptive haiku Rachael… thank you 🙂
I never tried to find a word to describe their pose before – hieratic does splendidly, Frederic. The first time I saw a heron I was cycling across the marshes here in the mist. It flew straight over my head. Like a mystical kind of mirage. I didn’t quite fall off… 🙂
Reblogged this on theworldoutsidethewindow and commented:
Beautifully crafted writing…
This one just grabbed me… I could see it, I could hear the silence… Beautifully captured!
Thank you! I’m really enjoying your haiku too. You’re giving me a lot of inspiration. I’m sorry I don’t respond more – but I will 🙂
No worries :). Time is a rare commodity for everyone these days, it’s been hard to keep up with all the posts in WP.
This is wonderful, I have re-blogged 🙂
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media
That’s so sweet of you. 🙂
This is wonderful – simple, pinpoint accuracy, drawn with skill. Congratulations.
Thank you, Geoffrey. It’s perhaps not odd at all that the ‘better’ ones just seem to present themselves with very little work on my part… If only life were a little more like that 🙂
That, dear lady, would be life, but not as we know it 🙂
Okay, this is perfect, Rachael! Honestly, I don’t think you could improve on it if you tried for a thousand years. I love how beautifully you capture the stillness of the heron just before it takes flight.
Thank you, kind friend for making my heart fly on what’s been a bit of a non day. I’ve heard say that one should fiddle endlessly with a haiku… in my experience they’re the poems that generally turn out rubbish, or at least fail.I have a stack of these now which should never see the light of day. It seems to me to be exactly the same when we edit our stories – fiddle too much and they end up contrived: we’ve killed our precious babies. I suppose there’s a middle way… one with a very light touch perhaps
Sounds like a great plan to me. I often wonder when I’m sitting down, tinkering endlessly with story revisions, if I’m actually making the opposite of progress. 😛
Wonderfully haunting
Herons are like beings that live on the margins – in between two worlds, yet not in either. Maybe that’s why I’m always so surprised when I see them in broad daylight 🙂
yes, they really are liminal birds, seen as guides between the worlds by our ancestors 🙂