What could be the purpose of such brilliance, Snow in Summer? Perhaps in some prior life this most strident, most absolute of colors kept her safe. Perhaps she lay to in a frigid land and all these amazing feathers are only artifact of dim ice ages past. Or in the brief season between her comings and goings this is her temporary color, as polished and transparent as paper made of rice. Except, there is no other phase than white in egret-painted skies.
There is fragility in all this. The bird, the salt marsh where she lands, even the turbulent sand. From the South the assault comes by hurricane, each season earlier and more ferocious than the last. From the North it is the melting. And where there is not flood, drought. There is no reprieve. As the brackish plain is silted out or altogether gives way, where will Snowy Egret go? How will she retreat from Winter when Winter itself is in retreat?
When the sun pounds like the hammer to the anvil all life is forged to the blow. The upper latitudes break away. The equator burns. North and north and north the southern creatures go driven there by unfamiliar weather. Life once rare becomes common. The common vanishes. Perhaps it is not camouflage but survival of a more intense and personal kind that turns the Egret white, reflecting not just light, but heat. Maybe she will be all right. What about us, I wonder.
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by Mark Seth Lender, 2011
