Owlish

Owl in the Black Oaks

(Like this Blogger, I too am reading my way through Mary Oliver. Perhaps before the end, I will be reading no one but her. The others are important, but when I return to Oliver, I'm no longer convinced they are necessary.)

If a lynx, that plush fellow,
climbed down a
tree and left behind
his face, his thick neck

and, most of all, the lamps of his eyes,
there you would have it -
the owl,
the very owl

who haunts these trees,
choosing from the swash of branches
the slight perches and ledges
of his acrobatics.

Almost every day
I spy him out
among the knots and the burls
looking down

at his huge feet,
at the path curving through the trees,
at whatever is coming up the hill
toward him,

and, though I'm never ready-
though something unspeakably cold
always drops through my heart-
it is a moment

as lavish as it is fearful -
there is such pomp
in the gown of feathers
and the lit silk of the eyes -

surely he is one of the mighty kings
of this world.
Sometimes, as I keep coming,
he simply flies away -

and sometimes the whole body
tilts forward, and the beak opens,
clean and wonderful,
like a cup of gold.

Mary Oliver