The great horned owl,
the naturalist told us,
has senses so wonderful
it can hear our hearts beating in our chests,
the rush of blood through our open arteries.
That's how, she said, it hunts its prey,
tiny mice hiding beneath the snow.
Discerning their tremulous pulses,
it bears down on them like doom from the pine branch,
reptile talons outstretched upon faceless snow.
Does the mouse’s pulse, I wondered, quicken
as the owl’s Valkyrie wings descend?
For one—me—unhunted by the raptor
there is a longing to be heard
to bare one’s chest to the aching ears of the bird
to beat the worried rhythm of my soul
to this listener, hoping vaguely for reply
or for succor.
Why this desire for this secret discourse,
this singing one to the other,
beating heart to bending ear?
We move, each day, among throngs of us,
crowds of us, bumping, passing,
every soul beating its peculiar drumbeat,
every street a percussive chaos—
joyous crescendos, dirges, incantations—
yet we are as silent to one another
as the timpani of the ninth
to its feverish creator.
This bird sits within its wood and wire enclosure
hissing at the passerby, irritated to be awake,
pine-cone shaped but for its feather “ears,”
absurdly lopsided on its swiveling head.
Still, it listens and looks
with a knowingness that makes me
linger hopefully by the cage-side.
For this infinite moment, I will whisper
to the interested, will pause discreetly
for the owl to look in my direction
and, with no more than a show
of its black, impassive pupils,
hear me.
