Broad Wings, Long Legs: A Rookery of Heron Poems

Engagingly designed and boasting a wide array of more than fifty Minnesota poets, including Robert Bly, Broad Wings, Long Legs contemplates the iconic birds of the Midwestern marshlands, paying homage to the herons and cranes that stalk, stand and fly into and out of the lakes, ponds, backwaters, and corn fields of the continent's midsection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781682011478

Book preview

Front Cover of Broad Wings, Long LegsHalf Title of Broad Wings, Long LegsBook Title of Broad Wings, Long Legs

Copyright © 2024 James Silas Rogers. All rights reserved.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-68201-146-1

Printed in the United States of America.

Cover and interior desgin by Liz Dwyer of North Star Press.

Text Set in Times New Roman, Terracotta, Silverstein, and LTC Caslon.

Proceeds will be donated to Friends of the Mississippi River, a nonprofit engaging people to protect, restore and enhance the Mississippi River and its watershed in the Twin Cities region since 1993. Learn more at www.fmr.org.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Poetry and Herons

JAMES ARMSTRONG

Flotsam and Jetsam

PATRICIA BARONE

My Father Contemplates His Life

ROBERT BLY

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

EMILY BRIGHT

Midnight Kayak Ride

PHILIP S. BRYANT

Like a Prayer

WALTER CANNON

Six Blue Herons

MARYANN CORBETT

The Birders at Miesville Ravine

KATE HALLETT DAYTON

What Is Not Seen

CHELSEA B. DESAUTELS

A Dangerous Place

JANE DICKERSON

In the Audiologist’s Office

KIRSTEN DIERKING

Kayak

MARY MOORE EASTER

Blue Wingspan Above the Downtown Pond

LARRY GAVIN

Lighting Our Way

DIANE GLANCY

Epistle from a Migrating Heron

GEORGIA GREELEY

Evening Rituals

LAURA HANSEN

Taking the Back Roads Home

MARGARET HASSE

Color-Plate 161–Audubon’s The Birds of America

SEAN HILL

Silas Fishing 1967

DONNA ISAAC

Rise

ANN IVERSON

The Unfolding

DIANE JARVENPA

There Was That Egret by the Side of the Road

JANET JERVE

Consultation

JAMES JOHNSON

The Great Blue Heron’s Return to the North

DEBORAH KEENAN

Blue Heron

ATHENA KILDEGAARD

Translation

SCOTT KING

Torpor

JANNA KNITTEL

First Kansas April

JAMES LENFESTEY

Hellish Hot Day in the Anthropocene

SU LOVE

The Moon a Heron

JEANNE LUTZ

Letter to an English Teacher

ETHNA MCKIERNAN

What the Light Leaves

JOHN MINCZESKI

Great Blue on the Kinni

RITA MOE

Only by Happenstance

JIM MOORE

Near Herons

MICHAEL MOOS

Silence of the Blue Heron

MASON NUNEMAKER

The Rise of the Heron

REBECCA RAMSDEN

Great Blue

WILLIAM REICHARD

from Equivalents

MAEVE REILLY

A Question for You

JOHN REINHARD

Between the Earth and Sky

ELLEN ROGERS

Longing: A Fable

JAMES SILAS ROGERS

On the Cannon River

MARY KAY RUMMEL

Night Birds

CHRIS SANTIAGO

Two Alligators

FRANCINE STERLE

Birds of America

JOYCE SUTPHEN

Only Now

SUZANNE SWANSON

Rookery

RICHARD TERRILL

The Lake

JOEL VAN VALIN

Backwater

MARK VINZ

Fishermen

CONNIE WANEK

Big Alden Lake

CARY WATERMAN

Bonfire

ELIZABETH WEIR

Fishing

GWEN WESTERMAN

Migration Path

MORGAN GRAYCE WILLOW

Blue Heron Cinquain

TRACY YOUNGBLOM

It Begins

Contributors

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION: POETRY AND HERONS

Broad Wings, Long Legs traces back to the first weeks of the pandemic in 2020. Up until that time, I’d regularly attended poetry readings in all manner of venues, a practice that came to a screeching halt with the lockdown. As I cast about for a way to remain in the literary world, I thought back to a remark by Denise Levertov that every poet of the Pacific Northwest has to write a heron poem now and then.

Might the same thing be true of Minnesota? I wondered. An email to a few dozen poet friends revealed that this was absolutely the case. I followed with a broadcast