Thomas Halloran



Halloran's poems have appeared in The Literary Review, caesura, The Comstock Review, The Wild Goose Poetry Review, Defined Providence and elsewhere. He was one of the "Ten Writers Worth Knowing" in a special millennial issue of The Literary Review, Fall, 1999. As a psychologist, he studies the space we see in pictures. He now lives in Santa Rosa, California, after teaching in the United States and in Asia.



Little Blue in Steele Creek

When it sees me, it steps around
an aimlessly paddling mallard
in its way, then vaults
ten more yards upstream.

The bird waits,
hair-trigger neck cocked.
It gets harder to see
as air falls heron-blue

and then by dark,
fish-full or giving up,
it suddenly cranks its lank wings high,
one at a time as if

for the first time ever in history,
then abruptly
all the several motions change
to its sturdy, flawless lift home.
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