Sunrise Ceremony

Chris Ellery

January 4, 2026

If I had driven my truck this morning

instead of walking the footpath in the dark, 

I would have missed the great egret 

standing alone in the water 

watching me as I stand watching her, 

just where an Ndé maiden stood 

many centuries before 

watching another great egret 

watching her watching her 

in the third dawn of her sunrise ceremony. 

For an instant, I see as the maiden saw, 

pollen, cornmeal, clay, and I, too, 

am White Painted Woman 

of the gray people beholding myself 

in the eyes of the white bird. We three—

the bird, the youth, the elder—share 

the sacred peace as the year divides, 

unpolluted air and light, and comprehend 

what goes, what comes, what always is. 

Now the egret, looking skyward, stretches 

her slender neck and powerful wings 

and lifts her body from the mud. 

She is flying east, fringed with sunbeams, 

away and away, then turns 

and draws a wide circle around us, 

then back again comes, 

swooping down, ghostly gliding, 

filling the sky as she passes, 

and with vigorous strokes 

of her heavenly wings heads west 

to rendezvous with the end of the day.  

We watch her and watch her and watch her

until nothing is there but empty sky. 

Our people are waiting, but they must wait.

Our hearts are dancing with the blessing,

holy morning of a timeless world.

Nothing is the same,

and what happens once happens forever.

Breathless, we wait 

for the day to settle itself into what it is, 

then set off on our separate ways together, 

eager, watchful, grateful, glad

for the sunrise gift of change.

Chris Ellery is the author of six poetry collections, including Elder Tree, a meditation on the 13th month of the Celtic year. He is a member of the Texas Association of Creative Writers and the Texas Institute of Letters. By his count, "Sunrise Ceremony" is his 50th poem to appear in TPA.