In the fall off 2013, I found the courage (or it found me) to make some pretty big career and family life changes.  It was unsettling at best.  As that time came into its own, noisy Herons began appearing everywhere.  I turned to Ted Andrews’s Animal-Speak for understanding, and learned that Heron medicine is for people who appear to dabble in various occupations and ways of living life; that this can seem unsettling to most people, but for heron people there is great security in this flexible approach to life.  Here began the heron poem.

Must it be Heron?

 Though I look to the sky longingly

For eagle,

Or owl,

Or hawk at least,

They are not the totem of this time.

Except on occasion

When dear hawk provides her traveling mercies.

It is heron who continues to find Star and me,

Here on the bridge

As we learn of old age,

And the changing seasons of our lives.

Fall 2013

JEHW