Some dead
only now take shape

Years beyond,
the turmoil 'round their on-goings
calms down enough;
the heat cools off considerably,
and the dust of life's inconsistencies
settles,
to reveal the turning totem of reality,
hitherto shamed
- and one starts to realize
whom – and for that matter what -
one has dealt with

Some surprising occurrences
give clues,
some pry the moment open
in a Satori bolt,
leaving a picture etched
on your retina and your mind,
like photographer Kerstin Ståhl's
magic nocturnal January picture of a heron
standing on an ice floe
in the black waters of the harbour
with the modern,
too expensive for the common man
residential blocks behind it on the quay,
with all lights shining
out of all the windows,
giving the impression of a spaceship
about to lift off,
cutting a lonely division
between the species;
Homo sapiens forlorn in its mind games;
the heron in solitude,
with that trembling, violently shining
residential spaceship behind it,
the proud bewinged with folded wings
symbolizing that which is
of itself, in itself,
threatened in these times,
on the edge of the shadows;
the photograph an involuntary analysis
of evolution
at the crossroads