“Ada wondered that herons could tolerate each other close enough to breed. She had seen a scant number in her life, and those so lonesome as to make the heart sting on their behalf. Everywhere they were seemed far from home.”—Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
The heron held in the shadows, her long legs rising like reeds from the pond; thin yet graceful figure blending with the gray and back-cast shadows of willow before light of setting sun; blue sweep of her face matching then hue of violet shadows cast by willow reeds swaying soft in breeze.
Matthew studied her in her stand as she peered into the shallows…waiting. He remembered back to a book, one she shared with him summers before.
*****
He remembered her in the same summer light, her length of legs in late-youth’s bloom becoming Woman. He saw her again in shadow-cast of mountain ridge from valley walls where river ran. He remembered her summer tan and the way she appeared in gleam against the red-brown rock of mountainside and river bed—natural—as if she was always meant for the place and her presence could be no other way. He remembered the color of her top and bottoms, green and turquoise tones that broke the shape of her silhouette as they melded into the living greens of mountainside.
He remembered her downward gaze, the sweep of her foot through gentle current casting “V”s in drifting wake downstream; and the way in her eyes found his when looking up for him.
There was a message in her stare, an asking without words, and it struck him with a want and longing that hollowed the low of his belly and ached in his upper thighs.
It was the moment he knew, and in night they became in dance known to them and stars alone.
He remembered the morning after, a different gold in new-day’s light, a new hope, changed dream, new witness to living light.
He remembered the autumn after, a trip to her hometown where they fished in rivers that flowed both ways; with the ebb and flow of tides marked and discerned in the changing height of mudbank shores and the lean and wake of channel buoys marking channels carried in direction of tide’s current.
He remembered the softening of her tan, her paling like the flaxen reeds in autumn marsh; how her hard-lines of summer secrets framed then in tones of transition and only the centerpieces of her secrets full-striking in contrasts of flesh, tone, and form.
*****
Matthew studied the heron where she stayed. He watched her where she held, the methodic movement of her leg in sweep as she shifted stance. Then, discerning Matthew on the bank and knowing herself seen, she departed into flight.
A sadness returned: a lonesomeness for something loved but never meant to keep. He understood that now, though he could never see it then.
It is a wonder herons ever hold long enough to love, but such is a haunting in their effect, like silhouette in light and shadows of a solitude where one is let near, but never too close, and when one does she will never stay.
He understood now why God commanded such acts reserved for marriage and to only one in life. There were days his mind escaped and he returned to her again: remembering every sweetest sin that never seemed as such.