"The Owl is the Doorway into the Unknown"

West Coast backyard owl

The title quote is from The Golden Cauldron
by Nicki Scully

September 13, 1999

I sit beside my mother's bed

as she lies dying.

Our eyes meet: all the words we cannot say,

all the missed connections,

misperceptions,

in this lifetime,

it has always been

this way.

I release the ways

we never got it right;

forgive, no need to hold the anger tight.

Just "I love you"

and her spirit

flies away,

out of the room

into the starry night.

Weeks later,

I am driving

towards her home

when, in slow motion,

across my windshield

flies

a gray owl,

feathered being,

infinitely wise,

as she passes looking

deep into

my eyes.

Time is suspended

on this point

of traveling.

Somehow I feel

a message has been

received

and, somewhere in my spirit sore,

unraveling,

I know all is understood

and I believe.

Owl, swooping sideways

into the forest green,

bird between two worlds,

all that we know and the unseen,

harbinger of change,

of mysteries beautiful and strange,

as our eyes meet

I know an Oracle

has been.

Wise watcher in the night,

friend of the moon,

fly after she

who left my world

too soon.

Fly, messenger

of my belated transformation;

and give my love to my mother

in the Spirit Nation.

I am posting this poem, which I wrote in 1999, for Alan's prompt at Poetry Jam:

Owls. I doubted I could write an owl poem better than this one, and Mary gave me dispensation to post it, just this once!! Thanks, Mary. Do check out the other links at Poetry Jam, kids....there will be some owl-fully good reading, I am sure.