Sometimes, grace is like that
The cattails parting to reveal
Your great spoon bill
Your silly grin
Your spindly impossible legs, as unlikely as a cartoon.
I do not see grace when I look at you. A cosmic joke perhaps, or a benign bearer of babies

And yet
The medieval anchorites did not see you so
They saw you pull your feathers out of your breast and feed
Your young ones with blood
They saw you die
And they thought they saw you rise again the next morning

I have not seen you die
But I have seen you take wing, and rise
White and great above the swamp
Wheeling away into the sky