Poems of Nature and Humankind

I've heard the barred owls' lovers'
quarrels night after night, but never seen

white feathers rifling the misty blue.
In the runaway static of hail, of sleet,

Caution-heart freezes before road.
Stark familiar, who haunts by absence,

nothing is truer than white
against white, where edges

don't blur but become
the other. Sometimes I fear

I have looked right at it
without seeing. Shadows cross

and the eyes fool us, great
white wings rise or do not

rise from a white plain, the figure
repeating itself in blank relief.

How long will it take?
How many near misses?

How many lonely stands
knee deep in the drifts?

Fled before summer's balm, featherwork
once etched across a bright field.

Long past winter
the snowy's after-image stays.