Letting Go of My Egrets

My egrets land after the sun goes down,
whirling on the evening wind
wide as the skirt of a winking woman,
whose lipstick is red as a deadly sin
and shinier than an Archangel's conscience.
My egrets are long-beaked,
fish the cloudy marsh of my conscience,
they do not eat like birds,
their hunger will not be sated
by a single multi-finned act of contrition.
My egrets are sacred, but will not sit
pretty on the head like
my grandmother's Sunday hats.
My egrets caw as they claw the water's skin,
caws sharp as the teeth of a tiger shark.
My egrets are not an endangered species,
they rise plumed like geysers in moonlight
and multiply like mathematicians from MIT.
I recall the words that created
many of my smaller egrets,
when they surround my squeaky bed at night
with their rapid knee-high cries.
My biggest egret tosses its head
like a woman I never asked to marry me.
My egrets are Herons, but not heroic,
and almost addictive as heroin.
I sometimes wonder about my egrets
as they strut about in their long-legged gait;
how they fly so far on those thin white wings,
how they maintain such perfect memories,
why I feed them so religiously every night?