Love Story with 2024 Birds by Derek Furr NEUF

The artist guides our eye to the clutter of the room

and the quality of light on the apples, and we wonder. She

attunes our ear to the scratch of the pen hurrying to write

the most earnest supplications before self-consciousness

takes over. Surely the fact that I worry means something.

Surely my room of so many days holds stories worth

setting down. Consequence is an act of imagination.

Everyone wants to imagine a consequential life. (from In My Room)

A heron slips along the shoreline as if on rice paper. A

great angler, he will place a reflective object on the waters

surface-a pin oak leaf, for example-and watch for a fish

to investigate. The herons patience, driven by necessity,

far outstrips mine. Fifteen minutes in and I lower the

binoculars to look for other birds. Meanwhile, the green

heron waits, motionless, seemingly dispassionate, until a

fish is in range and he strikes. Is it hyperbole to compare

the jolt to lightning? His long neck shooting out and

snapping back, he breaks the waters surface like a diver

with barely a ripple and comes back with the catch. He is

fed because he waited, quiet and watchful. (from Green Heron)