Owls

• Owls glide off the thin
• Wrists of the night,
• And using snow for their feathers
• Drift down on either side
• Of the wind.

• I spot them
• As I camp along the ridge,
• Glistening over the stream beds,
• Their eyes small rooms
• Lit by stone lamps.

Robert Hedin is the author, translator, and editor of numerous books, most recently The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge (co-translated with Robert Bly, Copper Canyon Press) and Poems Prose Poems, (Red Dragonfly Press). He serves as director of the Anderson Center, an artist retreat in Red Wing, Minnesota, and edits Great River Review. “Owls” is from The Old Liberators: New and Selected Poems and Translations by Robert Hedin (Holy Cow Press, 1998). The poem is reprinted by permission of Robert Hedin.