Moon in the Trees

This is how the year should end, I thought to myself while walking the dog in the dark just after 8 pm. The temperature was dropping, headed somewhere well into the negative digits. The sky clear. The moon caught overhead in the bare branches of a mid-winter tree. The night calm and quiet but for the squeak of new fallen snow beneath my boots.

On similar nights during other winters I've heard owls (though usually later in the night and later in the season). I suddenly felt the longing to hear them again, to stand and listen as long as it might take. Like the poet Thomas McGrath awaiting the "blue star Kachina," I would keep vigil for the voice of a Great Horned Owl. I stopped when the dog stopped, and I listened. The sound of a car passing many blocks away. Then the night was quiet once again.

Posted on December 30, 2017 04:28 AM by scottking