Note: This issue is best read on a computer screen, but a phone’ll still work.
One day last week, my friend Tonya messaged our group chat with a lovely update: a heron had landed in front of their house to eat a fish. The rest of us were enchanted by the thought of it, but none more so than Tye, who’d misread the message and thought the heron had laughed, not landed, in Tonya’s yard.
An even better image, we agreed. “A heron laughed in my yard,” Tonya said. “Now everyone complete that poem.”
I did.
*
I. A heron laughed out in my yard and let loose the fish she was holding It soared through the air and hit the ground hard earning Heron a dreadful loud scolding You’ve dropped your meal! You silly girl And now my brow’s a-furrowing You can’t get it back! Look at it curl into the soil—it’s burrowing! Ma Heron flapped once and took to the sky, her muttering trailing behind her Miss Heron just shrugged and let out a sigh Wishing her mummy was kinder Then flung herself sidelong upon the ground To watch her ex-lunch in his toil The fish, with a shovel, was digging around And finding treasures in the soil Up he came! With a jewel, all shining and bright And pushed it toward the bird’s wing He said I like laughing. And digging. And light! But friendship’s my favorite thing.
*
“A rhyming poem!” Tye responded when I sent it to the group. “I would have expected haiku!”
“Me too,” I said, and thought, Or something sad.
Then came another, no less improbable than the first.
*
II.
There once was a laughing blue heron
whose vegetable garden was barren
She said “Surely the fish will suffice for a dish”
but the fish said “No, my name is Darren”
*
I typed and edited these two poems quickly, between tasks at work, my mind going a million miles a minute. Life has been way too much, of late. For a long time. I keep moving, always moving, both because I must and because slowing down feels dangerous. This is both unsustainable and unwise, and it is what I’ve been doing.
A few days later, a moment of quiet found me anyway, and with it came crashing down the realities, feelings, and pain that my to-do-list-flight-mode-going-going-going strategy had been keeping at bay.
A third poem—a haiku—came, then. And so did the tears.
*
III. Every day, the same impossible decision: Will I survive? Or will I live? The heron chooses laughter and drops her hard-won fish.
*
In these bitter times, laughter and silliness can feel like a betrayal, an act of selfishness, a denial of the horrors unfolding all around us. But joy is not frivolous, nor is it irresponsible. It is resistance, and it is necessary.
And:
Breaking down is necessary, too. Weeping is important. Leaning on a friend and letting them lean on you is resistance. The sadness is no more shameful—and no less essential—than the joy. The heron, and we, can hold all of it.
another thing i made
Out now in Baby Teeth: “A State of Decoherence,” my collage/erasure of Blake Crouch’s sci-fi novel Dark Matter. My friend
described my piece as “insight on the hidden language of alcoholism and how it seeps into cultural acceptance,” which is so satisfyingly succinct that I wish I’d used it as my artist’s statement. You can see and read “A State of Decoherence” here.tenderness toward existence days
CW: Food mentions.
“Anything that helps, no matter how goofy” will be our theme for the rest of this month.
Sprinkle Day (July 23)
Tell an Old Joke Day (24)
Carousel Day (25)
National Water Gun Fight Day (27)
Rain Day (29)
International Day of Friendship (30)
Jump for Jelly Beans Day (31)
I don’t know about you, but I could use all of these.
Tell me: what helps you?
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. In the midst of ::gestures at everything::, I am so, so glad you’re here.
1. I am glad Heron I. is both rhymed and humorous; it works pretty well as a cod-Irish folk song. I can hear a pennywhistle, anyway.
2. Here is a thing I realized as a surfer about "gnarly": it is a great broad descriptor for something that is messy and dangerous and ugly and fun all at once, but it is also a very vivid specific descriptor for a particular kind of turbulence - one that looks like a burl in woodworking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl), which is burly, but also gnarly. It's gnarled. The surface boils up in rough semi-spheres. A smooth ride is glassy, but a gnarly ride is like cobblestones and potholes.
3. Somewhere I have a copy of A Humument, which is a novel-length erasure poem. I have it on a shelf with the graphic novels, because it's beautiful to look at. If you haven't seen it, I think you would like it, coherently. I feel a little tipsy after your page. It's nice to look at, though. Maybe I'll have a lie-down.
I wasn't expecting the heron to lead me to the places it did, but it was a wonderful experience. Thank you, Kate.