The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Laura Helyer

Laura Helyer was born in Suffolk in1981. She trained to be a professional ballet dancer for several years and then gave up to study Art History and Literature at university. She now studies Creative Writing the University of St. Andrews where she also works in the library. Her poetry and prose are beginning to be published in magazines.

The Heron

Tryst. Origin: late middle English (originally Scots) variant of obsolete trist ’an appointed place in hunting’, from French triste or medieval trista

I meet you again by the bridge
in the gentle half-dark
between the dog and the wolf.
Streetlights glaze and burn,
leaves travel on the water
and your presence –
a thin shape of attention,
the colour of misted glass
is more shadow and ghost.
It is quieter than this empty school
and its dark, blinded windows.

You wait again –
always this same trysting place,
confidence in the current,
and just moments before the stream,
pinched in slightly
races faster from you.
You wait with the patience of the moon
watching for the sea to texture,
or like a standing stone
in this ritual light
with a concentration
that slows the heart.

It is the beginning of the world.
And when you do move
I miss it.
Quicker than an insects eye
you look at me with a fish
smiling between your daggers
and then lift into flight, legato
low at first, following the burn
out of town, wings arcing over
and phrasing the night air.