Day 724 of the Daily Poems. From wetlands to wet. Rain sluicing down – and from ‘How to watch wetland birds’ to ‘Owl watching’. Our poet today Fiona Clark writes “I watched the barn owl during one long November a few years ago, during a time of family illness. He was a mysterious blessing!”
Owl watching
I learnt the grammar of twilight, watching owls:
that moment when the autumn sun sinks, crimson,
under black horizons. The ‘blue hour’ then unfolds:
amethyst, alive with grey and charcoal shadows.
Precisely on his cue, between sunset and dusk
from the dense cover of a hollow oak, he dives:
a small white perfect owl, sharp as crystal.
The universe commands him, for he feels
the soft and silent rhythms of the light.
He did not ask to be himself nor choose
to seek the scream of voles, the blood-sweet kill,
the crunch of minute bones, that blazing heat
within his maw, each tiny death his life.
On high branches, raucous rooks confer
in rain-cloud blackness. All the crowd appoint
their sentries, to muster the assault.
He is the enemy. They mob him, scattering
with murderous cries. He wings away,
alone and vulnerable, from their harsh harrying,
back to his secret path: by silver lines, invisible
to human sight, he follows with his golden eyes.
Alone he lives and quarters his sad land.
I’m watching for him, in that purple hour –
he knows my face, unruffled by my presence.
Just once, as I rushed down to our trysting place,
acknowledging my life with level gaze, he flew to meet me.
Fiona Clark