Great Horned Owls

Many many moons ago leaving the porch of a south-facing canyon, I hiked to a place where the foothills narrowed, Where the asphalt road ran astride the reservoir lake into which kingfishers dived at will, and Great Horned owls hooted at passerby, And crickets chirped in the castor bean in the broom grass, in the sumac and sorrel and the scrub oak and the sage, I walked with gathering dusk upslope to the ridge where one lone bat in diving approach, plunged to air as kingfisher to lake, As owl to moon or as moon to owl or as owl to owl, two owls upon the perch fated couple to a lifelong mate. At this very place I saw my mission unfold in ceremony of solemn joining in deepest respect this wedded pair framed aside starlight, Framed within angles of better aspect placing male to left female to right, then married them there till death do they part, He in a cassock of feathers all attention to duty she with a blink of a solitary eye, I with a wave of the official hand, "I decree thee man and wife" I the chaparral poet of authority captain on this ship I do wed thee, witnessed by bat and kingfisher cricket and castor bean. And so my sudden voice startled both to flight he with wings to eclipse the moon, the sky she in silence winged forever to his side.