The Heron at Low Water

The river has withdrawn below the reeds, leaving a bicycle, a shopping cart, a row of bottles filled with different skies. A heron stands beside the broken wheel. The morning traffic crosses overhead. Its shadows travel briefly down the bird, but nothing in that narrow body moves except a feather lifted by the wind. I stop with bread and milk against my ribs. The bag grows damp. A drop runs down my wrist. Beyond the shallows, where the channel bends, a bus releases people into rain. Then, in a stroke that barely stirs the reeds, the heron takes a fish. A silver stitch is drawn through air and swallowed. There is mud, and water closing where the fish had been. The bird steps forward, lifting one long foot clear of the wire caught around the wheel. I shift the bag and start towards the bridge. Below me, someone else has time to wait.