Heron

 February 4, 2021

Awoke still angry about the vaccination. Awoke from a dream of being at a resort with a bunch of others (DJ and JK among them) and suggesting that we all go to an 11 PM showing of the movie Caravaggio. No one was with me. When I woke I was still deciding whether to go by myself. Truthfully, I was thrown into a terrible mood. Sat in the living room missing my dog Bimbo. Certainly that is gratuitous self-indulgence in response to gratuitous cruelty, however small. 

Yes, I know I am the least unfortunate person on this planet. There are moments when that realization does not help.

On the other side, my hawk perches very near and stares into my windows, as he is welcome to do. He fluffs up comically in the cold, like he’s wearing a red barrel. 

I glanced at the pond and couldn’t figure out what I was seeing, until the image (gray on gray in the winter snow) resolved into a heron, stalking and stabbing at my fish, glittering orange in her beak when she got one. I watched a long time. She waded out, waded back in, took her leisure on the ground at pondside, apparently at home. I looked at her through the binocs, where she seemed a mosaic of a heron, flat and vivid, her yellow eye suddenly quite disturbing, as though my pond had been ravaged by a dinosaur. Hawk flew inches over her head and she didn’t flinch. 

So God said, “Does the heron make up for yesterday’s dirty trick?”

“No. But close.”

“Ah, yes it did. I can tell. You’re jolly now.”

“Well, maybe, but don’t pull that shit again.”

God gives me one of those impossible-to-interpret looks. 

Phone rang. I answered it instantly. “We have been trying to reach you regarding your automobile warrantee–”