Standing Work

The egret stands in water that barely covers its feet. It has been standing there for forty minutes. I know because I've been standing here for forty minutes, watching it not move, and we have made a kind of agreement, the bird and I, to waste the morning together. Patience is not a virtue in an egret. It's a hunting strategy. The fish come closer when nothing moves. The heron knows this genetically, which is better than knowing it philosophically, because the heron actually catches fish. I don't catch anything. I stand on the boardwalk with binoculars and a thermos of coffee that has gone cold, which is my own fault for not drinking it while I was busy watching something not happen. The salt marsh is two miles from the road. You park at the gravel lot and walk the trail through the cordgrass, which grows chest-high in August and smells like mud and iodine and something sweeter underneath — the spartina releasing its particular chemistry into air that nobody breathes except the marsh wrens and me. A dozen egrets work this marsh. I see them at different stations, each one perfectly still, each one alone, spaced out across the flats like chess pieces that have decided the game is over and they'd rather just stand. One strikes. Quick, the neck uncoiling from that s-curve it holds, the bill hitting the water surface and coming up with a minnow that flashes once in the light and is swallowed whole. Then stillness again. I have a job. I have emails and a performance review next Thursday and a car that needs an oil change. The egret has this marsh and its one imperishable skill. I drink the cold coffee. The bird catches another fish. We both call it a morning.