You have to love them

for the way they make takeoff

look improbable:

jogging a few steps,

then heaving themselves like sacks

of nickels into

the air. Make them wear

mikes and they’d be grunting

like McEnroe lobbing

a Wimbledon serve.

Then there’s the matter of their

feet, which don’t retract

like landing gear nor

tuck up neatly as drumsticks

on a dinner bird,

but instead hang down

like a deb’s size tens from

the hem of her gown.

Once launched, they don’t so

much actively fly as blow

like paper napkins,

so that, seeing white

flare in a roadside ditch, you

think, trash or egret?—

and chances are it’s

not the great or snowy type,

nearly wiped out by

hat plume hunters in

the nineteenth century, but

a common cattle

egret, down from its

usual perch on a cow’s

rump, where it stabs bugs.

Whoever named them

got it right, coming just one

r short of regret.