The Owl’s Woods

One mistake after another in my studio. I kept at it until I got done.  And when I came out of my studio, the clear blue sky, bright sun and smell of warm earth ushered me into the woods.

The certainty of ticks, (I already have a bite on my belly from a colder day), took me to my neighbors path which I haven’t been on since the snow was deep.

The sun rose in my heart and my head cleared as I drifted through the woods.

Now what is left of the snow and ice is specked with debris from the trees.  Bits of bark, tiny twigs, translucent leaves, single green pine needles or bunches of three and four.

It looks like an artist’s handmade paper.

Suddenly, for a moment,  it gets dark and I put my hands up to block my head, because I’m sure something is falling on me. But when nothing does, I realize it was the shadow of a large bird flying over me, blocking out the sun.

Zinnia joyfully crashes through the thin ice in the swamp, the bottom half of her black with mud.  She smells like the stuff on either side of life.

On the way back I see the owl that dropped her shadow on me earlier.

She flies low and soundlessly through the trees.  When I get to the place where I think she may have landed I stop and look hoping to see her.  I know she could be right in front of me but, to my eyes, she becomes the trees she lands on.  It’s only movement that will give her away.

Then I think, I already saw her once, isn’t that enough?

As I continue down the path I wonder if she isn’t the same owl whose pellets of matted fur and bones,  I keep finding in the woods behind the farm.

Because, of course, those woods are these woods.

The imaginary lines my neighbor and I draw between them mean nothing to the owl who lives there.