Egrets
Egrets - meaning Summary
Faith Beyond Dark Things
The poem follows a speaker pushing through a painful, overgrown landscape until three egrets appear at an otherwise dark pond. Their sudden whiteness becomes a vision of trust and spiritual composure. Unlike the speaker's struggle with thorns and mosquitoes, the birds move calmly through darkness, guided by an instinctive faith in the world rather than by rational explanation.
Read Complete AnalysesWhere the path closed down and over, through the scumbled leaves, fallen branches, through the knotted catbrier, I kept going. Finally I could not save my arms from thorns; soon the mosquitoes smelled me, hot and wounded, and came wheeling and whining. And that's how I came to the edge of the pond: black and empty except for a spindle of bleached reeds at the far shore which, as I looked, wrinkled suddenly into three egrets - - - a shower of white fire! Even half-asleep they had such faith in the world that had made them - - - tilting through the water, unruffled, sure, by the laws of their faith not logic, they opened their wings softly and stepped over every dark thing.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.