Owl Poem by Daniel Brick

I wrote this poem to celebrate - and remember - an unusual encounter with an owl. First the setting. The Mississippi River, rolling majestically between very high banks, divides the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. There is a parkway that runs on both sides with big, expensive estates on one side of the street and a wide walkway bordering the high banks on the other. I am describing the St. Paul side; the Minneapolis side is slightly different. I am surprised more don't walk along this parkway during the daytime and evening, but people prefer to walk around the many lake fronts in the cities.

One evening, a good number of years ago, a friend and I started on the Minneapolis side, near Minnehaha Park heading toward the University of Minnesota campus. This walkway is not wilderness by any means. It's all residential, but there are no commercial buildings to clutter the scene. Just after I locked my car, I felt something brush my cheek; a few seconds later, my friend said something had brushed the top of his head. We became aware suddenly of an owl's hooting, soft but insistent. It flew from the tree just over our heads in a swooping motion, and disappeared in the gathering twilight. But a few seconds later, repeated the same movements from the other direction. This pattern continued during our whole 40+ minute walk. The owl would wait for us in a tree, always visible, never hiding, make his swooping flight just above one of our heads, disappear, make the return flight, seek shelter in a tree ahead of us. All the while, we heard its distinctive hootings. If that owl had wanted to slash one of us on his swooping flights, it could have easily done so. We did nothing to protect ourselves, but it never threatened us. We crossed paths with a wild thing, and it played with us for almost an hour. But 'PLAY' is a weak word. I believe, and my friend even more strongly, we were blessed by a creature, 'one of the lords of life',
in D.H.Lawrence's wonderful phrase. This encounter occurred many years ago, but it remains fresh and strong in my memory, my friend's and we suspect the owl's!