The Gallery of Owls

The river running underground

had made a maze of tunnels

through the inner thighs

of the Pyrenees,

where cave man

Abbé Breuil lay with candles

making pen and watercolor copies,

far below him the faint

sound of water trickling

and close above him

a labyrinth of lines:

herds of bison, horses, bears.

Engraved in the deepest galleries

a lioness with litter,

two snowy owls

with a chick between them,

and "the intoxicating

silence of the painted rocks"

pressing him down the long canal

toward light.

By the diamond-leaded panes

rising beside an old library carrel,

I've been studying

photographs

of owl-shaped urns

bearing the cremated remains

of three children and one adult,

an owl-shaped burial urn

with a vulva

carved in its abdomen.

Through dusty glass the trees

shake their heads.

The silent, white, sleepy-eyed owl,

abroad by daylight, keeps

to the open spaces.

It flies unseen against the clouds

where snow unrolls over Canada.

The eggs are nested

in feathers and moss.

Here the gray-gold owls

with heart-shaped faces

hunt by night in the cemetery

beyond the playing field.

They whistle and purr.

Their hieroglyphs

roost in high-relief

in the façade of Rockefeller Hall's

collegiate gothic tower,

Athena's birds, burrowed in books,

at rest on a stone shoulder.

My own brain inside its urn

presses me

relentlessly

out into the transparent air

to eat, breathe, and visit the century

that includes me

in its generations,

with my bits of flint.

An absent river washes over me,

traveling through

a filigree of caverns,

for a while, before flowing free.

Who am I then? Three snowy owls.

Firelight on walls.