How many times have you driven along a road only to see an owl, or maybe it was a squirrel, or some other animal on its hind legs, or standing, or turned to stare at you as you were driving straight at it. Most critters hear you coming and scurry away but every once in a while….
The Owl on the Avenue
Driver: What the…? Is that an owl I see in the middle of the road?
Owl: Driver, I have seen your machine coming this way many times before.
Driver: Wow. It is an owl. Look at him.
Owl: I can see your stare through that glass paned window.
Driver: Look at those brown feathers, his solid bullet-like body, wow, and those eyes.
My God.
Owl: Driver, I am the son of the spirit world! This is my holy ground.
Driver: Look at those eyes. Those eyes are looking right at me.
Owl: I concentrate my being through these eyes. Look at them; see my immovable spirit.
Driver: Why doesn’t he move? He has to get out-of-the-way. Move over, owl, move.
Owl: This is my road before you. I claim what is mine. My children are burrowed along the
side.
Driver: Move owl. You have to go. Don’t you feel the rumbling of my coming, my engine’s
noise?
Owl: I am here. I blink hard only once. I know you see it, driver. It will tell you everything.
Driver: Owl, move. One blink, and that’s it? Move owl.
Owl: My road. My children. My ule spirit. Driver, I will not move from my world.
Driver: My God. He’s not moving. He’s going to get run over. Move owl. I only have another
moment.
Owl: In this moment, my eyes are the avenue of your world.
Driver: Owl. Go. Now.
Owl: Stop honking, driver, you are hurting my ears and frightening my babies…
From the Owl on the Avenue Trilogy
Written in the Book of Ancient Omens, Ill and Otherwise Fortunes
Elucidated as gospel in the Conflicts of Nature in the Light of Day; Thurber’s The Owl Who Was God; and in the Not-So-Wise Tantric Owl Tales.
Randy Mazie
The Writer's Village 