Beverly Burch _____ Once I Watched a Great Blue Heron pilot in from the Pacific over Elkhorn Slough, smooth as a Buick Riviera on cruise control at dawn, empty road before it, emptiness behind, the air still as God, yet the bird barely flapped a feather as it swung east, then north, so low I could see a snake dangle from its beak like heavy saliva, a surely-dead snake, I thought, until it wriggled up and tried to slap the Great Blue in the face. Dead weight. I meant, Dead straight; funny how words exchange sounds, call up a near-twin, jump the wrong synapse the way Ananda, Hindu word for bliss, came out demand a when I said it to my yoga teacher; but perhaps in the brain everything conceals its inverse. A giant bird, virtuous in faded blue, sailing a marsh at sunrise has a look of grace all over it, a word to suggest dinner, a pleasant meal, cover for the brutal story of food, the bloody business of the kill.