Owl at Dusk
If I’d not seen it
I would never have known it was there.
In perfect silence it dropped from the tree,
and like an apparition it cut between tree trunks,
then over and down the far side of the knoll.
For the briefest moment, I thought it was coming directly at me.
For the briefest moment, I was among the sorcerer and his monoliths.
Smaller lives of this wood have seen the dark hollow of that face
and too hushed in fear at its passing:
my mind slips into a psychology made of another epoch,
but I am neither prey nor predator here, and my dread passes
before this woodland sorcerer vanishes. I for one walk content
with the ease of the meal I make my way home for, and
all the more content with the sighting of such a wonder:
To resolve that dark image out of the obscurity — you see
there is instant where nightmare and reality converge: the
nameless shadow that drops from the trees
is of that instant; and
that instant is of the storied images that occupy the world of the dreamer.
The body believes in the permeability of dreaming and waking,
of imagination and reality, but the conscious mind will forget.
The dark apparitions that pass through the dreamer’s mind
need not bring the body to a fit of cold sweat
over mere figments of the imagination.
And yet it seems something has
nevertheless passed through the dreamer’s bedroom of a night,
if we are to rely on the senses to justify our empiricism.
I settle back into the reasoned comfort of wakefulness that
one of these worlds is apparently inaccessible to me now.
The dark apparition of nightmare has passed and
at this instant I watch an owl glide through the evening forest
banking between the trees and out of sight, until it is only myself
alone
in the failing light.
