Listening for Owls
Winter night, snow on the ground,
bare trees under a whetted moon.
The trail steward plays a tape
of the barred owl’s questioning:
Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?
In answer, a distant trill, just one,
faint as a chirp on a cellphone.
That’s all. Not what we wanted.
“What else do you hear?” she whispers.
We shake our heads. Nothing.
But children breathe, quiet and steady,
and boots shift in snow.
“An owl would hear that,” she says,
“anywhere in the woods.”
Illinois resident John Palen's latest book, Distant Music, came out from Mayapple Press in 2017. He has recent work in Williwaw Journal and Sheila-Na-Gig.