Just Before Christmas: An Episode of Needful Joy

“… our most aerial owl… found in any open expanse….”     ––The Sibley Guide to Birds

On the first day of winter, frost flowers scattered like sugar
here and there in the rough flanks and bowers of our yard,
news came over a local birding wire that short-eared owls,
a bird I’d never seen, had been spotted in the next county,
so my love and I, frazzled from too much holiday prep,
endless rounds of locking down and masking up,
and, yes, fearing the  pinch of  even darker days to come,
ditched our wrapping chores and gifting must-dos,
and before now became then, we told ourselves,
drove a crooked country road toward a farmer’s field
near McArthur, Ohio.

On lookers, some familiar, some not, sporting binoculars,
moved, we guessed, by the same need that moved us,
gathered near a rickety stretch of barbed wire fencing,
when, like clock work a few minutes before dusk,
out of distant tree line, a squadron of buff-colored birds
swept back and forth in plain sight over rolling pasture,
gliding, swooping, diving for this or that rodent morsel,
put on an acrobatic show, beak and claw, in the wide open
while we whooped and cheered, threw our hats in the air,
and knew then how much we, strangers and neighbors alike,
loved those rare birds who cared not one iota for us.

The Greenhouse in Winter

At first light, like clockwork, this deep in December,
a squadron of Canada geese, year-round neighbors,
lift off their icy roosts and make for local river meadows
to graze and browse like potentates among sere grasses,
their flight path smack dab over our house, their clatter
loud enough to rouse my love and me from sleep,
loathe to let go of dreamland, even on this rare day,
first clear morning all week, with blessed sun rising
in the eastern tree line and its promise of solar heat
warming the winter greenhouse in time to finish
the last of my last-minute Christmassy chores
amid the sweet odor of drying firewood
and dank, delicious smell of loamy earth
where small greenery refuses to give up life
even in  this cold  cycle of turning seasons.