Hi all,
I’m hoping to get a chance to see some of you at the drop-in writers’ group at the Sidney Library this Saturday, November 18, at 1 pm. This will be the last one for 2023. For more information, check Monika’s website here.
I’m also working busily on a new series of two in-person workshops called Poetry Workshops for People Afraid of Poetry, which are meant to be a gentle introduction or reintroduction to poetry and playing with words. They’ll be on Saturdays, December 2 and 9, 2023 from 1:30 to 3:30 at the Cook Street Village Activity Centre. Cost is 30$ for one or 50$ for both, and I’m having a blast putting them together. For more information, check my workshop page.
In between finding prompts for the drop-in and the poetry workshops, I’ve been thinking about owls. Because who doesn’t think about owls in the autumn (or is that just me)?
The wing of an owl, dark brindled with light, camouflaged to disappear into moon-broken night. Shrug of shoulder, beat of great wing. Silent muscles that coil and uncoil in a great barrel chest, orange eyes looking, looking for prey: tiny mammals who listen with careful ears for the so-quiet sounds of wings in air.
When I lived on a farm in northern Alberta, we would sometimes go out at night in the winter and try to call great horned owls. I don’t remember seeing them, but I remember eerie noises coming back to us, and darkness and snow.
I remember the little pellets of fur and bone they would vomit up, seeing them in the woods and knowing an owl had been sitting in a branch above. In my memories there’s no snow on the ground, so it must have been in the fall. The pellets were dry and crunched if you missed seeing one and stepped on it. A toe of your boot or, better, a sharp stick could break them open and you could see inside. If you were lucky your dad would be there, and he’d nod wisely and point out bits of mice and voles. Now that I’m a grownup I wonder how sure he was of the difference between mouse hair and vole hair, the different shapes of skulls, but back then he was all-knowing.
I always felt a bit sorry for the mice and voles, but who could ignore the majesty of the owls?
FROM THE SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
Speaking of owls, here’s a poem I wrote the other day. I was thinking about this picture I found of an owl from the point of view of dinner.
Great Horned
Fishhooks depend from toes vertebrae loosely tied hooked mouth hard mouth that cannot smile vomits the inedible parts of its prey. Horned they call it, for feathery eyebrows. Wise they call it, because of ancient Greek belief. Eyes like lamps, the round kind. Terror of mice, of small night-roaming things. Death that flies and stoops. Wild I call it, for the sound at night. Friend I call it for when I call sometimes it calls back.
NOTES
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And thanks, as always, for reading.
Yours,
Kelsey
Vole. Not bike. My autocorrect has taken over!!
How to differentiate between bike and mouse remains indeed! Love the warm childhood memories of trusting your dad!