Plastic Owl Effigy

by Shaun Lawton 

We discovered the entrance to a universe halfway up a hiking trail.
We were exploring one of the canyons along the mountain range nearby.
We've made it a ritual every winter to hike up the trails after dark.
There is no one else to bother us or get in our way sledding back down.
A blanket of snow is draped across everything in gleaming silence.
Sticking to the well packed path is necessary to prevent sinking too deep.
We drag our sleds behind us as we wind up the trail with light sticks.
Placing them carefully at bends in the path as markers, little glow posts.
Facing our mortality in the winds of night on a mountainside is a blast.
Sharing the forest with night creatures reminds us of our relationship.
Our relationship to the occult sky and the starpoints spread out above.
The kinship felt with the wind answers the question where do we roam?
Anywhere we please so long as we can carry our hearts and eyes along.
Off a bend in the path about a half mile up the trail we spotted an owl.
It was up on a branch in the half gloom, starlight reflected off its eyes.
Unblinking it regarded us in what some would consider a baleful stare.
As birds have always been our spirit guides, we knew better than this.
Owls in particular are indicators of portentous probability, to us.
This one proved to be something more as it flew away through the gloom.
It looked back over its feathered shoulder at us indicating we should follow.
Its aerial path took it between older trees deeper into the sighing forest.
Having been literally born for exploration of the unknown, we followed.
The ticking forest welcomed us into its embrace. We left our sleds behind.
That owl led us back to the city and is now perched over our front door.
It turned into a hollow plastic effigy filled with smooth rounded stones.
It fools petty scavenger birds from swooping into our yard for scraps.
The sleds were recovered and now hang in the garage, warped with time.
The ringing laughter cascading in our yard brings echoes of this memory.
Our children are forbidden from ever exploring the mountain after dark.
We simply want to prolong their time with us here in our heart.

A Tale For Children

by Shaun Lawton 

Wikki is a snuggly wuggly
Pretty Blue was cuddly too
Fuzzy Wuzzy was dropped eight feet
Zachary the owl was really neat

All these things I say are true
Now how many pets
remember you?

Smokey was a cocker spaniel
of deepest darkest black
Bambi was a small and spotted
spindly-legged fawn

Lancelot the ocelot and his twin brother
Ivanhoe romped until dawn amidst the pieces
of Bambi spread all over the lawn

Because Bambi got eaten
by a pack of wild dogs
who fell in from the woods
late at night while
the children slept

and the fire from
the fireplace licked
at the logs and all the
adults stood by and wept

because there was nothing that they could do
to bring Bambi back who was scattered
and shredded and gobbled-up by the pack
who though they're roaming around now
and feeling well fed,

they're looking for YOU and all of your friends
and family too to steal into your home
during the wee hours of night and
rip off your face with their teeth--

--they just might.

'Twas a terrible tragedy to behold
Smokey ran off with the murderous pack
the ocelots ate cockroaches,
got sick, and died.
Fuzzy slept under
the tire for the
very last time.

While Pretty Blue and Zachary flew
off into the cloud jungle blue
and Tangle Bones Rubber Head Wikki Wikki Kitty
was left to be cared for by Jen in the city.

~ fin ~

Through the Creeping Glass

I.

Evening's primal tide
pulls us to her dark girth
the sun's heat rise severs
our umbilicals of birth
the shade of night falls, a filter
slivered into a vertical pupil opening
silent unseen gates through which
a predatory bestiary steps
into this, our world
after the curtains
of dusk are drawn
the theater of sleep
projects fractured visions
within our domed cathedrals
while outside, IN THE GREAT
WALL OF THE WILD the darker
side of thy lacine thrives
and the children are trained
to walk in the sun all their lives
and to run from the stories of wolves
that are lies cried out by the elder
and weaker in power who've been
given three tries at building
their enamel tower black
on the landscape of dream
scaring the crows away
with a crucifix loom
as its shadow leans out
while the Sun's going down
and the majority of the whole
of men awaken from their
nightmare's compounded
gravity to walk around
in the lightness of the Sun
each one a beast
with a mask of complacency
and a mime without individuality
a king stripped of sceptre
or a jester tricked back
into forgetting to remember
he's a member of the cast
hypnotized into performing
the dream that is played
in the cathedral of wilderness
for the seated rows of hooded monks,
reptiles watching themselves.