Allahabad

Looking like the 65th species

of heron, egret, and bittern

in the Made in Cambodia

t-shirt she calls Tacky White,

making it sound like the name

of a butterfly in Speak, Memory,

she stood hunchbacked

under the eucalyptus

in which a cattle egret

in breeding plumage

was hiding in the leaves,

its bill turned

towards a frog pond, as though

from its slime would appear

fair Lancelot or Lochinvar.