Prognosis
I walked alone in the chill of dawn
while my mind leapt, as the teachers
of detachment say, like a drunken
monkey. Then a gray shape, an owl,
passed overhead. An owl is not
like a crow. A crow makes convivial
chuckings as it flies,
but the owl flew well beyond me
before I heard it coming, and when it
settled, the bough did not sway.
—Jane Kenyon
—found in The New Yorker (November 14, 1994)