for a leucistic barred owl
One afternoon, I found a snow-
white barred owl lying prostrate at
the base of a pine tree.
She was the most solemn,
most beautiful creature I have ever seen. Even in
death she was holy.
I asked if I could bury her, only for
men to laugh at me.
I was to bag her up, throw her away.
I could not bear it. I left this task
to someone else as the wind
called down in mourning from the highest peaks of the
mountains.
It was one of those days when the new-green of
the forest is so bright,
it makes you want to cry for the effort
the world puts in to rebuilding itself right when
winter starts to feel
like the end of every thing.
I should have stayed with her.
Seen her off.
But the world
knows better, even if I do not:
I am older now, and she is growing
into new life, still. Slowly.
What men disregard, nature tends to
with time.
blue jay
Turning the corner
a line of
dark blue feathers
with tufts of white are strewn
across the ground.
Never ending,
the violence of this end stuns
me to stillness:
how the air cradled
this small soul
then the roar
of an engine,
the blinding beam
of the headlight:
the final fall,
tumbling down
from grace.
Rolling
over and over,
like a child down a hill.
What is a bird descending, ascending
but the sound of a human heart
taking flight?
I always mourn these lost birds
I walk past on the sidewalk,
their last sight so far
from home.
Faith Cotter is originally from Pittsburgh, PA but now travels the world as a U.S. Foreign Service spouse. She is the recipient of a 2010 Society of Professional Journalists National Mark of Excellence Award, among other regional and local awards for journalism. Her poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Time and Singing magazine, ZO Magazine, and the Madwomen in the Attic’s Voices from the Attic anthology. She has an MA in Professional Writing from Chatham University, and has lived in London, DC (where she currently resides), and (very soon!) Amman, Jordan.
Image: Mike Baird from Morro Bay, USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
