A Friend Beside Me

"...a friend beside me whom I do not see
without words making it come clear to me
the youth of heaven the ages of light"
– Merwin from "At Night Before Spring"










Owl Down

As important to know owl
that soft bunch of wind blown feather
who must have slipped the night before
perhaps the light of the road
was lower than that of the moon
I suspect a car or two passing above
and the silver sheen of old snow
had found it lying along dead oak
nothing more than new weight
a glove from a hand dropped
and as I pass watching another silver
curve of cloud above in blue
I sense before I arrive here the woods
know less than I do so still and numb
my bones of the same trunk
and of the same of half froze cones
that stand tilted submerged near owl
the eyes of an island of all living
opened as if a map to a hollow
near as bone and timber and lost
untold dreams of dark mice singing