Erin Wilson
​Image by Vlad Tchompalov from Unsplash                                                                              
The Last Blue Heron

  after James Wright


Sanctuary. I wanted to write it, to build it, to draw it,
to make it, to press it with a pin, lead-white, crepe-thin 
against a wallboard. I wanted to find it, to frame it,
to keep it. I wanted to pick it like a nit from my loved
ones' shining heads. I wanted to suck it from the forest floor
filtered between moss and manganese and mushrooms.
I wanted to shout at it, Aha!, to point at it, to graph it,
to make it halt, to stop its flying/dying/loping off. I wanted to
stuff it in my eyes. I wanted to stack it in my mind.
I wanted to inject it, caress it. I wanted to transmute it
into gold, to stash it in my teeth furtively stowed, receptive-
transistor-radio-fillings. I wanted to protect it, the long 
svelte neck of the last blue heron. I wanted to become
the twig it might pluck out from amongst the ruddy rabble.
Broken bit of bract, I wanted to be chosen.





















__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Home    About    Subscribe    Guidelines   Submit   Exclusives   West End    
Erin Wilson's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in B O D Y, Vallum Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Shore, Verse Daily, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Her first collection is At Home with Disquiet; her second, Blue, is about depression, grief, and the transformative power of art. She refuses to carry a cellphone. She lives in a rural area (on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory), in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishinawbek.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

©2023 West Trade Review
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community.  Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Listen to Poem: