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The snow owl


Night after night I sit and look out
Hoping to see a barn owl about
As white as a surrendering flag -
This gliding wraith-like spirited rag -
Would ghost the dark field in looping strides
And scan the rank grass with razor eyes.

A facial disc, ears set obliquely,
Picks up murmurs sent unconsciously
By vole and mouse – but, yes, lost to me.
Signals that were never meant to be
From deep inside the raked-over grass:
A war zone as deadly as Arras.

This floating thing of deathly beauty
With fine synchronous duality
Is the most sublime killing machine
I am sure that I have ever seen;
And I’ve worked with tigers and lions,
But this owl alone brides its talons.

Yet, see, its peril is also white,
As soft a shroud as wings in the night.
Snowfall that covers the killing ground
Blankets out unwitting sight and sound
And shields for one and for all the voles,
Who may now venture outside their holes.

Yet what brings life in train brings death, and
Will fate Her players as chance demands.
For beneath the snow, still in the fray,
The brown fox now ventures into play.
And snow, which enables voles to crawl
Out of sight, masks the deadly footfall.

Nature weighs, measures and will balance
All the players in Her endless dance.
No design and no manufacture,
Refined, eternally year on year,
Until parts all slot in their places
Until… 
Until man kicked her traces.

His ‘god-given’ urge to dominate
And be set above Nature’s mandate
Does with sublime precision tamper
And monkey with the blind watchmaker.
Those parts that never can be put back
Become young future’s brains to rack.

So the barn owl, in microcosm,
Sets the stage within Nature’s prism.
One immaculate crafted species
Details Her overwhelming thesis.
And would, with infinite patience, show
The magic of the owl and the snow.

© R.M.Meyer
Devon, January 2019