At a lake near my house there is a heron I call my therapist. I hadn’t seen him since October: seven months weighted with the ache of a century. Too much happened and too little changed. I wish current political horrors felt unrecognizable, but it’s like watching a reboot of a movie no one wanted the first time. Familiar in the worst ways, leaving me longing for what’s familiar in the best ways.
From a distance, I questioned if it was really him. There are a lot of herons in St. Louis. There is a lot of beauty in St. Louis, and it tends to vanish without warning.
But it was my heron, my old friend. Don’t ask how I know — do I ask you about your avian analysts? He was back in his office: a withered log under a bent branch. A flood had wrecked his last one, but he had found similar new digs.
All that mattered is that he had stayed. He stayed in St. Louis even though he could fly anywhere. I stayed, too. We stared at each other and didn’t wonder why.
