GRACEFUL & FIERCE

Graphite painted on paper
15″ x 18″
private collection

All of my reverence is held for the Great Blue Heron, The stoic sentinels of our great shifting rivers and wetlands. My heart swells when I reflect on their grace, power, and the stillness in their ever-focused gaze.

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

–Wendell Barry