Lee Evans

On the metal cap of a piling
By the pier at a seafood restaurant,
The Night Heron squats
Stoop shouldered and hunchbacked,
Camouflaged by the dusk,
And waits for the crabs and the crayfish
To stir in the shallow tide.

On a cruiser moored at the dock,
The oldest mate in the world
Scrubs down the deck and bags up the trash,
As the Night Heron contemplates
The leftover chicken necks
That are about to plunge
Into the oil slick creek.

Hunched over a keyboard,
Surrounded by typescripts,
The uninspired poet stares
At the blank expanse before him—
Waits, like the Night Heron,
For the Muse’s castoff morsels
To arise from the Mind and float,
Spelled out by his fingertips.