Ciclo CCXCVIII

The heron stands motionless in the canal’s shallows, a stroke of white against the water’s dull green, its beak a needle poised over nothing. I watch it from the low wall where the sunlight fractures—one blade of gold across its neck, the next across its folded leg. The bird does not breathe that I can see. The moment lengthens like wet plaster. Then the head darts forward, the throat convulses, the whole body arches into itself as though swallowing its own shadow. The water closes. The silence remains. The page holds the tremor of the hand, not the heron’s strike.