Owl Time

Alexander Moriarty

We wait,
and watch, and listen:
The wind breathes around us as we breathe.

These long, paused nights
are ours.
The dark, the faint stars,
the aurora, the cold and the way the wind rushes in
before daybreak.

Hanging clouds
blend with our feathers
and the world creaks slowly
like the top of the pine
on which we perch.

We call.
We cannot move. Not yet.
But we hear, even the smallest sound,
from each other,
and stir, and blink, and shake
off this torpor, the dusting of snow
that made us sleep.

During these nights
as hard as the moon’s points
we save our strength.
During these hard days to come
nest near me, warm sister-brother:
we will nestle our ears
on each other’s chests
and hear even the smallest sounds:

the slow beats of the pulsar
that is your true heart,
the wind that breathes
and breathes around us
at the heart of the milky way
that is mine.

Rest, prepare,
wait, listen.

When the hard days come to us
remember our nights–
call our calls on each others’ breath,
sing the stars scattered in each other’s eyes
clutch this waiting strength in our talons
as we shake ourselves waking

and rise as the moon does:

inevitably.