An owl rose up from the flats about the creek.
White as a summer sky, cast silent wings out
to catch winds grown soft at the end of a hot day.
She slid along the edge of the trees, over the slow water,
in the long shadows of evening, nearly invisible in the gray light.
A mouse spurted from a log to a clump of grass,
flood water’d weaved into a little shelter.
He huddled down, a bristle ball, against roots
spread out through soil packed tight.
The owl fell hard and launched herself up again.
Ghosting back to her snag above the flats about the creek,
she swallowed whole a trembling life.
