The tree knows the owls,

Understands their form and shape

In its limbs

Recognizes an absence of absence

When they are there

​

But doesn’t expect them now

In this slant of ocher light

Slipping through the thinning canopy

On the west side of the mountain

An hour before dusk

​

Nevertheless they’ve come

Moved by my movement

On this abandoned haul road

They settle side by side in the familiar ash

An old couple on a park bench

​

They turn to each other

Press their foreheads together

In some ritual of expression

Some eloquence of owlness

A language I almost remember

​

One turns towards me, the other away

I simply stand in the road

Aware I am in this conversation

But unaware of how to speak

How to join in

​

I raise a hand slowly

One continues to stare, the other turns to look

I lower it just as slowly

And reluctantly move on

So as not to worry them

​

Farther up the trail

I suddenly know they were not worried

Nor was the tree, nor the light, nor the mountain

They all merely spoke to me

In an owl moment

 

I heeded that small ceremony

Witnessed, somehow heard

As I hear now, a slender whispered gratitude

That I passed by

And did not ask for more

He was like the wood of the mast

he brought from the ship

to make the four foundation logs.

He saved the unsalted top

to spoke-shave the Norway Spruce

down for his fiddle-box.

​

The drone of the pipe was in his blood,

and he thought he’d left

his sea-legged jigs on the shore,

but as he sailed through the forest

with the thrush and warbler,

he knew the mountain

remembered the dance of the sea,

and his songs flew

on the bowsprit of the Alleghenies.

​

The night the cabin was finished

a skeleton stood in the doorway,

didn’t speak, cocked its bow arm

and played Turkey in the Straw.

When he woke, he wiped the sweat,

took down the fiddle,

tried it,

and never played it another way.

​

He laughed at the bubbling limestone spring,

the splash of summer,

the quickened color in the sap-drained leaf,

and cozied in the covering snow.

He seeded his joy into the land

and took it back at his pleasure.

​

They pulled the planks from his sea chest

to make his coffin,

played his tunes for a night and a day

before they laid the fiddle in with him,

and after they put him in the ground,

they marked the spot with a single straight cedar to the sky

pointed like a mast

on the mountain’s horn.

No answer to my call.

On the floor, the drugs

and the overturned cup.