The Birds of Love

[Port Alberni owl - taken in somebody's back yard

I don't know who to credit for this photo (besides the owl:)]

[for Eric]

An owl

has taken up

residence

in my brain.

Sometimes I can feel her

perched

on my

left shoulder,

muttering

in my ear,

a distracting

refrain.

Owl,

harbinger

of death,

or Oracle?

She carried

 a message for me

from the spirit world,

in the days after

my mother died,

a message

I could not

decipher,

no matter

how I tried.

Owl has
returned again.
I wonder why.
And every night,
now,

I have been

dreaming

about you,

thirty-years-gone-by

love of my life

and, in my dreams,

you love me

this time

so I can

feel it.

You loved me 

then,

I am now sure,

but I was

too incomplete

a person to believe,

you too steeped

in sorrow

to endure.

When I told you

I was leaving,

you opened

the gate of

the birdcage,

released

the widowed dove,

and off she flew.

You could never know

how, all those years,

the dove of my heart

has kept on

circling,

circling,

back to you.

What does this

all mean?

Are you alive?

Or have you

entered

the spirit world

unseen,

sending back

messages

to me

in a dream?

If you are gone,

then now,

for sure, 

you know:

when I told you

I'd love you

forever,

back then,

my words

were true.

I only wish
that I could know

you knew.

There is

a blackbird

singing

in the dead of night

in my

solitary heart,

that takes me back

to that rooftop,

that time in the sun,

a time when

we were

so beautiful

and young,

and every night, now,

I am dreaming

that we have

only just

begun.