As autumn wanes and winter falls,
I always wait for owls' calls
They must not live near me, close by,
so seldom do I hear their cry,
but every winter, once or twice,
they come to my woodlot for mice.
And so I know, on some cold night,
when milky moon spills liquid light,
a muffled wail, a haunting chide
will part the darkness, here, inside.
And I will turn, lie very still
and listen to the hooting— shrill,
and then, again, musky and loud,
enfolded in a billowed cloud.
With fog it fades, as great wings beat
through gauzy gloom, where wild things meet,
and trees and owls and creatures blend
in ancient turns that never end.
As echoed voices wend away,
while morning turns the black to gray,
beyond my lot, their hazy howls
float back to where I wait for owls.
*this poem was featured in my regional newspaper in Feb 2020
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mysterious, haunting, and ancient, as the flap of the Owls
wings and hooting are heard amidst “gauzy gloom..”
Simply wonderful!
Diana…🍃
In my youth, when I hunted, owls were considered chicken killers and hunted mercilessly. I shot at one great horned owl at too great a distance to hurt it one time, but otherwise listened to and observed owls. From one young great horned owl held captive, I learned that the mother brought many birds, of all kinds to feed it, not mice. Birds caught probably sleeping at night.
In winter, the hooting may be mating calls. When I hunted squirrels in January in a woodlot, although it was often below zero, I saw in the distance. They built their nests and had chicks as early as February. Long before other birds that migrated came back.
Ron
budd