The Egret
A parable on regret
What do you know of regret? Have you savored its odious odor, its acrid mouthfeel? Do you know the ripe slick taste of old mistakes, formed into a bitter bolus and regurgitated, daily, hourly, by the minute? You chew and rechew anew, again and once again in a manner most bovine. It just might choke you. I say, spit it out.
I sat in the bullseye of my life, staring wanly up at the snaking cracks where the light sometimes filters in. I considered the angles of the sky and the trajectory of my happiness. I wanted the ground I lay upon to reconfigure its form—the ground I had walked boldly up to, had sat bodily down upon—to shift its molecules into something painless and parallel. The ground was solid.
But the window was open, and so upon the sill of my considerations there lit a bird: the anti-raven, the hero. A heron? White like salt, like cotton, like peace. An egret. The egret of regret tossed and swallowed the wriggling fish that dangled in its bill, then regarded me and spoke of my suffering in reedy, remonstratory tones:
“Human one, why do you deny the gifts of contingency? You claim to love freedom’s face; you invite it in, then send it away when it has the bad manners take you up on the offer. Beware the past, that sad interloper whose shadow will steal the precious present right out of your shaking palms if you let it. Hear…
