By Carolyn Pinet
Long-eared owls
gather food for their chicks
somewhere in Derbyshire:
with flame-colored eyes
and rotating necks, they
pinpoint and catch vole after vole while
scanning and probing the light protons.
Fall is here and I'm walking early
with Lucy the Beagle.
I watch her examine
one blade of grass after another
and wonder what I could be missing.
The water in the stream bubbles
and the sky's an impermeable blue.
If I were to spend a month on the ground
on my hands and knees,
would I find more than a candy wrapper,
a feather, an old coin? -
would I randomly come across
the Meaning of Life?
They say it's the search that counts.
I just passed the scat of a black bear which
was probably wandering lost in the
churchyard.
Here in Montana
things stare me in the face
until I finally see them.
I may not have the owls' acuity
of hearing and sight,
but I keep on looking,
I'm looking and loving.
Approaching Thanksgiving
October - November 2024