cooling
forest slumbers -
embers
of a living fire.
The owls stir
in tenebrous wood,
in eyelid-close between
dusk and
moonrise,
soft-winged hunger
plunging depths of
darker copse,
submarine world.
Dark-eyed, taloned,
shadows-come-to-life,
steal the warmth
from hungering mice
who can do no better
than finally match the cool,
committed wood.
- bruce g marcot
7/83
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.- William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British dramatist, poet. Old Man, in Macbeth, act 2, sc. 4, l. 12-3.
“Towering in her pride of place” means having risen to the point where it was ready to swoop down on its prey.
Photo above ©Bruce G. Marcot. Brown Wood Owls in a forest park in the old British hill town of Shillong, Meghalaya, northeast India.
