There is a heron who works this neighborhood like he pays rent, and I resent how much better his mornings are than mine.
He is there most Saturdays on the Audubon side of the road — one leg, folded neck, the whole posture of someone who has never hurried and cannot be made to. The neighborhood is designated for him, formally. There are papers somewhere that say the trees stay, the quiet stays, the water's edge stays rough enough to fish. Royal Park signed up to be his kind of place before it was ours.
I have watched him catch breakfast exactly twice. Both times it was so fast I doubted it happened — the fold, the strike, the swallow, then back to standing like a lawn ornament with tenure. The puppy has given up on him entirely. She looked, once, at the end of a taut leash, and he looked back, and something was settled between them that I was not party to.
What I like best is what he does to people. Walkers slow down. Couples point. A man on a bike stopped last week, both feet down, and just watched — and this is a man I have seen take phone calls in the ocean. The heron does that. He is the neighborhood's argument for itself.
Tea on the patio after, umbrella up, and if I time it right he flies the length of the block at roof height on his way somewhere better. He never looks down. He knows what he has.
— M.