By day at the marsh
droll waiters wait
seeming asleep
‘til night
to fly
from pondside roosts
invisible bearers
of death
their funerary finery
grudgingly displayed;
green-black watch-cap pulled
low into shoulders
hunched & brooding
breeding plumage crown
discreetly smoothed down
cold, denying.
At night by the lake
dark waders wade
silent sentries
for fish
that flash
from bottom silt
secret black-beak lighting
dispatched
their strike-toss-swallow single-sound
silhouette of stealth;
stalking rats along
shores of treasure-trash
bait abated
gullet & gizzard
working to grizzly
lethal effect.