Passerine

The salt marsh pale

green near the conifer

broadleaf and

the I who walks into

a refuge in silence

as if gazing at the blue

flame of being

—language’s pilot light—

this I is

seen by an owlblur

first, wings cast

like a net onto the late

afternoon. A surge inside

as if owl prey

bursts out my chest-thicket

to hide—a small dun

terror amid summer trees.

The owl, near

enough to declaw,

to index—Strix varia—

denies my presence,

his pellets under

the red spruce dense

with vole fur

and regurgitated crab.

I’m a broken animal—

nothing eats me.

If my hair were often

coiled in the shit

of something larger,

would it make the night

night? Something to be

in awe of other

than language’s fire.