About an Owl

 

Sore from a long night’s traipse

Soaked from the storm I trudged through

Knees raw from the chafe of

Trousers heavy with puddle splash

Arms aching from pushing

Palms blistered and heels

Long miles from home on the little-used track

I prop my punctured bike against a five-bar gate

 

And it’s sunrise.

 

I rest my elbows on the gate

Absorbing the view

Awed by the infinity of fields

Furrows - newly sown before winter cold

Run from headlands

Stretching to the Stone Age barrow and beyond

Brown, brown corduroy pregnant earth-lines

Narrowing to a vanishing point

 

From a distant steeple

An apparition - fulgent in the half-light

Intrudes my gaze

Serene, an owl of stately wing

Beats a silent flight

A single silver weft

Across the warp of heavy soil

And, after a seeming age

She reappears

 

The air stills

 

I wait, bathed in sunrise silence

Then my ears pick up the distant call

Of the owl returned from foraging, roosting

 

I take up my bike and walk.