Heron

Heron

When nature begins to imitate art,
diminishing itself to artifice
so that you cannot tell the two apart
-which is the real and which the crafted piece-
it’s like the heron made of cheap concrete,
poised and alert by a small garden pond,
its stillness unconvincing, incomplete
because you know the bird is just pretend.

Or is it like the heron made of flesh
and feathers that the eye cannot see breathe,
meditating on untold mysteries
and the possibility of fish,
more likely than the other to deceive,
more like a statue than a statue is.