The first swoop was like a night kite, low and silent and the whooshing gave way to a pin-drop-stop, characteristic of a type rope walker, on a branch above our heads. This was my first sighting. After a stare he flew far above us toward the woods, toward the wild part of town. I didn't see him for a year after that. It was at the end of March and Ryne and I walked the old brick road to the center of town but our walking was cut by the silent but majestically loud, ""hoo-hoo hoooooo hoo-hoo". Looking up on a branch we saw him; Ryne for the first time. His blazing yellow eyes blinked with a brazen audacity at his two much larger but grounded guests. We were in his holy space and by no means should we flinch or leave. His stare continued to burn until another "hoo-hoo..." peirced us forcing our legs to shock and awe, to step back, but with that the mighty bird leap from his perch free falling for a number of feet until he stretched out his hands all at once; hands for flying and the force of which sent him circling up and over the trees, over the houses, and back into the wild. We stood still.
Another year later I started to climb a roof to have a good sit with some friends. As I climbed and shimmied my footing on the sand paper roof I casually looked up to the radio tower that jetted like an apollo rocket from the gravel parking lot behind our house only to see a ghost land on the tower's highest point. Pointing my finger in disbelief I stammered my sentence around and around until for clarification purposes simply said, "Owl!" I knew who it was and had felt its holy space before. My friends, however, knew not what to think or to believe and stared at the tippy top of the tower thinking the lump to be but a light on an antenna. They held this belief until the light showed his wings and with silence we watched him swoop away for a meal; Travis remarking, "what if he swooped down at us?!"
Oh, he is chasing us and swooping down real low; his claws burying deep in our shoulders. The pain is real and needed. In the fields he takes us and asks us to bury ourselves, the false selves, the dead selves, the un-holy. Some bury their hands, some their feet but rare is the man to bury his whole being. Rare is it that men die completely. They can follow their new feet but soon their heart will die leaving but feet and no heart. They can follow their new hands but blindness will callus over the eyes leaving the hands to grope. Do men and women dare to bury their whole selves? Only then will all be new; new hands, new feet, new eyes, new mind, new heart, new ears...
He will translate the clouds to us,
speaking of life, of light.
His words will get to us
and will see him in the night.
