When moonlight falls through bamboo leaves, and swaying shadows slow-waltz like white-haired lovers floating across some garden dance-floor, a hoot owl begins to call from somewhere within the old pine out back. She’s big, yet flies so quietly that her wide wing feathers ride an airy silence midnight rats and mice can’t hear.

Castings lie beneath her tree most mornings. Sometimes, in my childhood-days-of-mind, I pick through the dry furry pellets and separate white skulls and skeletal remains from the darker gray walnut size pods. Then, as I did when I was ten, I line the top rail of our cedar plank fence with the remains of a hunter’s meal.

Keep this secret: sometimes I get a feeling there are wings growing from my back. There are things in the night that I listen to, but of which I can not write. There is magic that I don’t want to know how it’s done.

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