Among Regrets
Christopher Phelps

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The fire bowl’s full of rain again.
I can’t stop the rippled drips
of sentimental thoughts like, see,
things balance—after all,

a heron or egret white as a space
between meanings
has broken from hunting something
in the Tripsacum grass—

greener than it should be—pausing
in the temporary fairness of air
to stick its head in the fire,
a day late. Alternatively,

this safe, unsinged,
silent bird—how precisely it senses,
yellow bill a-beckoning—knows
exactly what to overlook.