#white egrets

[ijustkindalikebooks]

My library book haul from yesterday.

[viktuurishipper96]

Egret of the Everglades

[rudelyearly]

- In the Village (Stanza 3), Derek Walcott 1930-2017

[leatherwoodphotography]

Great White Egret Portrait

www.facebook.com/leatherwoodartisticphotography or www.iStudio.com/2748066

[thefondfarewell]

In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair, her beauty hunched like a crumpled flower, the one whom I thought as the fire of my young life would do her duty to be golden and beautiful and young forever even as I aged.

from "Sixty Years After" by Derek Walcott, in White Egrets

[extemporally]

I.

I suppose yes, they should be included,

your work has led to such improbable venues,

these sunsets over Brussels, the flashing windows

of the Grand Hotel and the soft enquiries 

of the cocktail piano, "Do you know what you did?"

to the clatter of the crowd at dusk. You acquire more fragments

trying to decipher conversations, posters, menus;

But why, once, instead of a bus you saw

a rock with chattering gulls or your island sky as

it filled with golden wine-light slowly, like your glass?

II.

Don't loiter in the neighbourhood of friendship.

The best of them will disappoint, will shut

the door quietly, do not be amazed at your exclusion.

Nothing means as much as their career;

the famous can be grub-like, the towering ones

turn into beetles; do beetles amaze you?

Remember the electric daylight of the emerald hummingbirds

in the bushes, they were like the purity

of first love, they were like the ferocity of innocence

like her brow, damp with a few hairs,

the whole afternoon in her hazel eyes.

Then, after her, the excusable treacheries.

- Derek Walcott, White Egrets