I didn’t call it to appear but I hoped.
When I look out after dusk, an unmistakable
silhouette on a bare limb of a half-dead tree.
With binoculars I only discern head
tufts. My knowledge of their species, poor. Great
horned my guess. It sits and sits. Preening
like any bird. Seeing whatever owls see. What I can’t.
Grass threads ruching or the bare twitch
of rabbit’s nose. Its hearing keener than sight—
can it detect my heart in thrall to it
as it does a mouse under a foot of snow?
Much is imputed to owls. If it be spirit carrier,
evil or sacred harbinger, I do not care. Oh, but what
I’d give for that unsullied, rapt attention. To be dredged
like a lover and left shimmering in darkness.
–
Suzanne Edison’s full length book, Since the House Is Burning, was published in 2022 by MoonPath Press. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Her poetry can be found in Michigan Quarterly Review, Lily Poetry Review, JAMA, MER, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle.