To the owl in my oak tree, yes you, I see you*

when your eyes fall out through leaves
and there’s an unintended solace
like the start of a dream, or fall,
or whenever the air and the skin
shared a coolness, you sat there,
I know.

my daughter, clumsily young
with a hand in my own,
shuffled down each step on her bottom,
carefully new,
like a baby seal on a hot beach
scurrying away from what
she knows.

she at times needed a hand
but as her clothes tightened and
her shoes filled, I saw her as you
have seen her, walking faster away
from me,
careless,
like a baby seal in the desert
scurrying to water years gone from beaches.

You knew her better than me
and for this I despise you.

we saw you one night
you know-

you had on these eyes that
were something orange,
like a boiling star,
a white face mask and
grey ear tufts––
we saw you,
she said, “Look Daddy, Look!”
and your neck moved past anyplace
my neck could ever move.

Is that how you saw her?