WHS Students’ Excel at this Year’s Scholastic Writing Competition. Read Their Winning Work (Part 1): ‘A Juvenile Great Blue Heron Learns to Fish’ A Poem by Miki Hoe

A Juvenile Great Blue Heron Learns to Fish

Somewhere – in the middle of nowhere

there is pocket of sand

embroidered with bull kelp and framed with 

sandstone – carved by millions of years.

The grains of sand have learned 

to cling

with a tenacity that 

only comes with old age and desire.

On a bed of algae and barnacles

a great blue heron

casts an impatient shadow 

on the Salish –

both a threat and a promise.

He lifts his neck to stare at the sun –

and at Icarus who whispers 

to not be so hurried and so 

young.

Maybe if I had been more patient

I might have seen the heron 

catch his first prey

and devour it with a hunger

that only comes with adolescence.

But at that moment

the sun and what I haven’t yet seen 

reaches 

for my body, ever so inviting,

So I join the heron in a dance of innocence

and a search for more,

heads reaching towards nothing

and yet everything.

Miki Hoe is a Junior at WHS. Her Poem, ‘A Juvenile Great Blue Heron Learns to Fish’, received a Silver Key Award