What Can’t Be Seen

After sunset I walk under spruce boughs,
 looking for the owl the others saw midday.
 Huge, they said, it took up so much being,
 so much heartspan in the air. Whoo whoo,
 I move toward it, no moon or stars,
 my way snow-lit.

Above the branches foxed in blacker
 than the sky, I hope to see its ears
 in silhouette, the shoulder-shrug of wings.

Whoo, whoo, louder now, then nothing.
 It seems just in front of me and high.

Beneath the trees, I stand inside
 my many years, inside the owl’s
 deep hearing— it’s hush, my hush,
 circling out and out and touching
 our grey heads. Let this be
 the what-I-don’t-see I die with,
 this feathered, thick-lapped
 listening of the night.


by Lorna Crozier | Artwork by Alexandra Khitrova