In noiseless passage
through the quiet dawn
a Barn Owl crossed
beneath the drift
of our groaning basket
midnight’s muffled thief
daybreak’s sated raptor
patron of the desert’s edge
rastering the woodland’s
providential floor
on her glidepath home
from a night of stealth
and eager gourmandise
among the pulpy moths
unwary voles
and ill-starred moles.
For an instant
the downy aftershock
of that cameo appearance
held us breathless
in its predatory grasp
when jarringly the gas-
jet roared again
and a blinding ray
of daybreak cracked
the sky wide open
out behind the ridge
to annihilate the spell
encircle us with sight
imprisoning our ascent
into the panoramic grandeur
of that intrusive altitude
to blind us with
the distant prospects
of terrain uncloaked
by light overpowered
by the noisy spectacle
of our awkward
lumbering conveyance
that bright balloon’s
ephemeral dominion.
Yet in recollection’s wake
dawn’s silent owl
remains out there aloft
and glides untethered
uncontained across
some inner chamber
of the earthbound mind
the silent passage
of her soaring span
the momentary privilege
of our vanished vantage place
a world away a world apart
forever fugal endlessly
recurrent eternally fugitive
indelibly there.
