Performed by Val Cole
POEM:
Demoiselle, by James Ross Kelly
In the last part of that time of dusk
when shadows meet the first departure of light.
over three fingers of the river
a Great Blue Heron performed an aerial pirouette.
Down with wisped blue gray feathers braking air
and into one side of a small island,
a fan of tail, a wing dipping
and to the other side,
where eddies and small pools
held more frogs and minnows,
only to see a man fly casting and then
beat wings hard, around, and again upward
through reddened light–down river.
That moment, bare, infinite,
myself standing in sand,
exchanging cigarettes & amenities
with another fisherman,
whose back is turned upstream
to the sound of faster water
I could not call his attention to this sight
and continued our conversation, with the sound
of river as chorus–I remembered the long legs
of a woman I had met the night before, as
gray blue wings passed
slow and noiseless over our heads.
Environmental Film and Screenplay Festival 