On my commute this morning, I was contemplating herons, and why they fly with their necks folded to a tight S, when cranes stretch long like geese. Any ideas?
I passed a dark pond backed with greening trees and was blessed to watched an egret descend on the water, uncoiling its long neck, heron-style, as dipped its feet lightly in the water. And I thought to myself, Startlingly white! To what end?*
And then occurred to me:
to fish, the egret
is a white cloud in blue skies
over green water
In fairness, it didn't occur to me in 5-7-5 haiku format, although I do utter phrases of exactly 17 syllables more often that you might reasonably expect or attribute to chance.**
Anyway, it was more like this: an image of a fish from the egret's viewpoint: bulbous eyes gazing skyward ... Aha!
* * * * *
*The Jim-in-my-head talks exactly like this. Be thankful you don't have to hear him all the time, like I do.
**And this is a prime example of a "poem" that is really just a somewhat interesting sentence with odd line breaks, right, Jinglebob?