Passerine
By Henk Rossouw
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.
Source: Poetry (September 2022)