A poem about a bird can be a picture of the world: Reading ‘Heron’s Place’ by Jeremy Cronin

A few kilometres outside Kimberley in South Africa is a pan called Kamfers Dam which is home to the largest population of flamingoes in the country. When I first saw them, stopping the car on the side of the N7 highway to Johannesburg and getting out to look, the multitude of birds seemed like an affirmation of joy and wildness after the grey dust of the diamond city. Wading, chattering, flying, the pink flowering of a myriad flamingoes was something wonderful — a glimpse of liveliness and continuity before, or perhaps beyond, the troubled history of the mines and the world that they made possible.