Night Owl
Their autumn now an elder just departed,
the mice fly out like leaves in whirling gusts
and spiral underground. Above, one trusts
the sky, recircling to where it had started
to flee, past starry flakes that do not cease
to fall, but spin and scribble in their bliss.
There, a speck, but in vicious white increase,
the night owl shows the earth what heaven is,
its plumes in flurries rippling crease on crease
but whirring down to one half-muffled hiss.
This fugitive, swung up into claw,
skims the brush and trees, flicks back, is gone:
a spark returned to ash. From mountain heights
and down through sheets and screes of mist, the lone
bird strobes and reappears, barely alights
beside the ghost of a knoll. It turns—night’s flaw—
the cloud-globe of its head, and thereupon
(parenthesized upon an ancient bowl
faintly brushed with gray), reveals a Chinese face
which turns back, disappears, bears scarce a trace
among the snow-capped boughs that map the whole.