Great Horned Owl
A Web Page by Roy J. Beckemeyer
Last updated: 9 April, 1996
"A Fortnight Into Autumn, Dreaming"
a poem by Roy Beckemeyer
Sometime before dawn
in the shivering-clear morning,
I'll climb from my bag
of feathery down,
metamorphosis complete.
Then, all hollow bones,
all round eyes,
all wings
I'll flap up to join
the Horned Owl returning
to his perch in that old sycamore.
Sitting side by side
we'll watch the moon's pale light
illuminate facets
of crystalline frost
(a false image, below,
of the glitter above),
then together we'll hold court
on the night's hunting success.
(Perhaps we'll cough up pellets,
the weft and warp
of interlocked bones
giving mute testimony
to keen, practiced skill.)
While all around us,
October will hang,
suspended between
summer and winter,
between south wind and north,
like Orion the Hunter,
straddling the meridian,
halfway between rising and falling,
like the owl and I,
perched between the sky,
and its icy, tarnished reflection.
Poem © 1976, photo © 1992, by Roy J. Beckemeyer