The Best I Could Do In the black-shadowed pines on the shore beyond the pond owl was sitting. When he saw me his eyes flared like matches and he did his big, loose hunch, stirring up the bronze of his shoulders, and hissed, and seemed about to fly away. Who knows why he didn’t but instead clamped his orange feet down on the black limb and stared into my face, though not my eyes— had I been mouse or squirrel I would have cried for my life. And thus we stayed for a long time. I would have given a great deal to have invoked some connection, eye to eye, to know what he thought of me here in the
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