The Egret Has No Regret

[Stephen Whiteside]

The Egret Has No Regret

The egret has no regret at its chosen course in Life.
Egrets aren't autonomous. It doesn't bring them strife,
And if they could have headed left one day when they flew right,
It's not the sort of thing to keep them wide awake at night.

Egrets cannot choose their lives. They blow like specks of dust.
They do what they were born to do. They do what egrets must.
They sleep. They wake. They drink. They eat. They mate. They rest. They fly.
Egrets never have a sense that Life has passed them by.

Egrets do not leave their mark upon the wide brown plain.
They do not ponder if its fine, or just an ugly stain.
Their beauty is unconscious, and it's fleeting, too, somehow.
It isn't there or then or soon, it's only here, and now.

Egrets strut. They stretch their wings. They shake their heads. They blink.
They blankly stare ahead a while, then drop their necks to drink.
They might be discontented, but I've not encountered yet
A rueful egret weighted down with sorrow or regret.

© Stephen Whiteside 28.03.2015

[Cropduster]

To live a life free of sorrow and regret is 'a consummation devoutly to be wished'.

Alas, we will never be as able to live in the here and now as does the egret, I regret to say.

[Bob Pacey]

Yeah but whatabout the cormorant !



Bob

[Stephen Whiteside]

Great cormorant poem in my book, Bob...

[Catherine Lee]

Enjoyed this poem Stephen - there's a good lesson in there, and besides this the poem has a great rhythmic flow.

[Bob Pacey]

What about


The common cormorant or shag
lays it's eggs in a paper bag.
But what these unobservant birds
have failed to notice is that herds of bears
will come buns and use the bags to hold the crumbs.


Don't know where I heard that somewhere back in my youth.


Bob

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Catherine.

Bob, that's a somewhat truncated - and scrambled - version of a poem by Christopher Isherwood, not a poet I know much about, I must confess.