Eat Prey, Love

When an owl is hooting outside your bedroom window, do you leave your bed,
strap on your head lamp, search the Douglas fir till you find it?
Owl?	     Owl? I’ve been meaning to ask if owls fall in love, 
or is it something else. Hoot-n-love? Eat prey, love?

My aloneness weighs less than the footprints of shrews. What’s a soul mate, 
        anyhow?
I think it helps if you both would wear a pink feather boa in public, if you know 
how to say things like The vole takes back every hurtful thing it said.
Oh, the haute couture of the courtship.

Once I took my son on an Owl Prowl. Before we set off to stalk 
the Great Horned, the leader handed us each what looked 
like a scruffy gray mouse. Our job: to poke the pellet
open, scrutinize the bones.

If you’re lucky, said the leader, you’ll find a jaw or skull. My son 
kept asking if we’d see an owl, and when we did
would it turn its head all the way around? 
I told him the head trick was lore.

What happens if the mole won’t accept your apology? What if you’re incapable 
of a la mode? It seems essential to have silent wings, no whooshing sound.
To know wide wings equal less flapping, less noise.
Do I need to tell you

we hiked two hours, didn’t find a single owl? That the trip leader 
shined his spotlight on what turned out to be a raccoon?
Sometimes a lover’s like Polaris, which we did see 
that night. Never rising or setting,
 


dependably shining. And sometimes your mate is like the owl Noctua, 
who used to perch on the tail of the Hydra; she’s gone now,
along with the mockingbird and the solitary thrush.

Read more from Issue 17.2.