A great blue heron rose from the bulrush pool today taking the sky underwing. Now I float on my back and the earth spins without me. I fill the hollows of my eyes with water, and the sun becomes colors without sequence, without pain, rimmed with gold. this beauty that blinds me.
I’ve seen these patterns on the backs of dolphins following my skiff. They play at escorting me here. I’ve drawn them like everything else: concentric, mosaic. Sometimes I laugh at them as they leap and fall back, leap again and fall back over and over, tumbling with the tide.
They dare me to catch them still like the black-skimmer I drew this morning. It died in the full sun of my neglect. I will draw it again tomorrow and the days after though it stares at me unblinking.
Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore Maryland where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank. One day he hopes to make the last payment on his student loans. During the winter months he acts as an unofficial snowflake counter for the weather bureau.