Flightless Nocturne

What silent songs coagulate between the Barn Owl and me as we hold our breath, eye to eye, waiting for the other to move first? Without language, we remain buoyant in a moment of awe and observation - two animals on this wild Earth.

I used to stand out in the mornings of the bone-dry Midwestern winters at the end of our gravel driveway, talking to the birds while I waited for the school bus. Why, I wondered, should these birds learn my language when I could whistle and sing? I tried my best to mimic them, infusing a natural sense of melody within the channels of air I pushed from lungs to lips. Morning doves and warbling wrens. I wondered what we might be saying to each other and felt a beaming sense of delight when I could manage the trick of communication - a suspended moment and the call of victory in return. I was a bird child, after all, who could fly away with these harmonic relatives before the school bus could ever arrive.

I must admit, however, that I am an amateur of articulation when it comes to the Barn Owl. What poetic phrase could capture such a thing? The arch of its Prehistoric wings, the aural precision of its heart-shaped face? A wild majesty, born to kill. Only the art of the tree, its arm an extended symbol of trust carved through years of safe landings, could offer such a successful collision. With it, a weightless beauty occurs. The owl will perch, and the tree will hold steady beneath its clawed embrace, a rooted lighthouse of deceit to all who inhabit the forest floor - only seen when it wants to be seen: the Barn Owl and the humble tree.

“Such a sad but natural cycle of life,” one might say on any given day, witnessing the bird as it plunges, omitting even the faintest hush of air through its wings. How easily it catches its next meal. “That is the way of things,” one might say, averting their eyes from the reality of it.

My dog is panting; a smile stretched easy on his cheeks. He stands at my heels, no taller than my knees. We came outside to bathe in the fresh Spring sun, to go for a walk through the grass blooming in tufts. The patio where we stand holds us up into the suburban canopy of trees, and we've paused to admire the view of the creek below before descending the flights of stairs downward.

I’m taken off guard when my eyes make the shape of her; at first, a gray silhouette smudged smoothly in with the blur of branches and leaves. The trick is that she sits plainly out in the open, teaching the lesson of attention to detail. If you do not see the Barn Owl, it is because you have chosen not to see her.

The songs that move between us then are ancestral if not biomechanical: adrenaline sneaking quietly out the back door, blood whispering through our veins, muscles ready for flight at a moment’s notice. I am flooded with the quiet crescendo of these primal instincts to take the protective stance of a challenge or respectfully recede. I remember that an owl doesn’t chase her prey, no. She’ll wait until he's running free and lift him mid-stride as if he suddenly grew his own pair of wings.

A rock forms in the center of my throat. I am met with my own kind of collision: awestruck curiosity and the animal instinct to protect. I am prepared to fight if I have to fend off an attack but at the same time find myself wholeheartedly leaning in. I want to learn more. I want to connect. I am reminded of the woolly mammoth. How many times did humans cross their path, offering a nod of respect as they aimed their spears elsewhere, watching cautiously as the mammoth let them be?

I watch her eyes slide down to the toasted white coat of the Maltipoo behind me. He sits now, happy to be with me where I stand on this easy day. Her eyes drift back to me again, beak tucked into her speckled breast. I tug gently at the dog's leash. We have reached a decision, the both of us: to live.