6:47 a.m. 25 degrees, wind WSW 1 mph. Sky: clear and cold, pink rinse across the south, fingers of sunlight running down Robinson Hill. Permanent streams: iceless. Me, enthralled by pulsating light and the melody of flow. Wetlands: heavier glaze than yesterday, a whiter shade of tan. From somewhere in the pines, beyond the marsh, the kip, kip, kip of red crossbills. Pond: a tighter, thicker seal (not that I'm about to walk across), a mosaic of ice, adorned with milkweed seeds, eye-catching white plumes, tassels in the breeze.
Across the marsh, in a wall of evergreens, a barred owl, bright as a patch of snow, mid-way up shoreline hemlock. Globe-headed bird, motionless, as silent as smoke, staring into the reeds, telescope eyes fixed and on fire, ears awry . . . unspooling sound. Reads a world, hears a world I cannot possibly comprehend. Then, decamps. A launch. Two or three flaps, long wings deeply curved and hushed. Into a cleft in the evergreens. Absorbed by pines.
Once, when I wore a younger man's clothes (to borrow a line from Billy Joel), I stood on a boardwalk in an old-growth swamp on the Everglades' northwest fringe. Looking up, a large barred owl, ten-feet overhead. A smaller owl, a pig frog dangling from his bill, landed on the cypress limb next to the larger owl. The small owl gave the large owl the frog. Then, betrothed, he mounted her, tails askew . . . connubial bliss lasting seconds. Done. They flew off deep into the generosity of the swamp. One laughing like a maniac. The other dining alfresco on frog thighs.
I love the mystery of owls. Birds of darkness. Voices like disembodied spirits. I've raised them. I've peeled them off roads; their bleached skulls like totems sit on my mantle. Chickadees brighten my outlook: owls, a manifesto, affirm the unknown.
A swirl of chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches. A debonair titmouse and six raucous jays. Newly minted sunlight seeps down Robinson Hill.
Mary Oliver's OWLS AND OTHER FANTASIES is an inspiring collection of poems and essays. Mystery and fantasy--both ways our imagination seeks meaning. Only once, on a nighttime walk, did I see an owl glide overhead. Felt touched by that glimpse of wildness, never forgotten.