Day Six brought balance and beauty to the physical world.
Rabbi Jill Hammer, Tel Shemesh
Five evenings in March,
a lady owl cooed
to the gentleman chosen
to father her owlets.
We marveled
at the metered rhythm,
the metronome cadence,
of call and response.
We waited
for yellow-eyed winks
from the moribund cypress,
for wingbeats at sundown, the screech
of airborne mice on their way to the nestlings.
By the sixth night there was no more
love-talk. The sound of wild presence
stopped. Briefly we pondered why,
why-not, but the after-hours pharmacy
opened, the medical mall expanded
parking, the cardiologists held
a ribbon cutting.
We forgot the star-crossed lovers,
no longer spoke
of the thwarted couple,
discussed our own dilemmas,
how to outwit traffic,
the sleepless bling of neon signage,
the side effects of medication,
meant to right the heart’s dysrhythmia.
A thoughtful poem about the hurtful effects of urban blight. All species suffer, including humans, when we lose our green spaces.
The concluding stanza in this poem stops me cold. After the sweet observation of the owls, it’s a sad commentary on how even many of us who are environmentally aware can quickly get caught up again in our busyness, leaving the dilemmas of nature behind.
I admire the excellent word choice and word sounds that lend this eco-poem a mystical quality.