The sun will not rise for thirty minutes.
The Great Horned Owl near the top
of our backyard pecan tree calls
to a companion in the tree next door.

It is a call and response, a song
I hear as mourning.
Lucy, our Australian Shepherd dog,
died a month ago. She is always present

as I sit here trying to write, tears still welling
in my eyes. I think, perhaps, the owl calls to me.
I know how this sounds. Loss and grief
do not look away embarrassed

at my poverty of spirit, the first Beatitude’s
blessing on the “poor.”¹ Look it up.
The “kingdom of heaven” is here, now,
tangible in our “world of sweets and sours”²

where ripe fruit does fall³ over and over, daily
in the early dark. Jesus understood.
Robert Frost understood: he didn’t know
“where it’s likely to go better.”⁴

“Jesus wept”⁵: the shortest (and longest) verse
in the bible. He understood the comfort
of wilderness, a garden of shadows,⁶ private
and defining. My grief. You have your own.

Footnotes:

* from St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayer for Peace:
“where there is sadness, joy”
¹ Matthew 5: 1-12: “Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
² from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Israfel”:
“Yes, Heaven is thine; but this /
Is a world of sweets and sours.”
³ Echo of lines from Wallace Stevens’ poem
“Sunday Morning”: “Is there no change of death
in paradise? / Does ripe fruit never fall?
Or do the boughs / Hang always heavy
in that perfect sky”
⁴ from Robert Frost’s poem “Birches”: “Earth’s
the right place for love: / I don’t know where
it’s likely to go better.”
⁵ “Jesus wept” (John 11: 35)
⁶ “Pure light blinds; shadows are required
for our seeing.” From Richard Rohr’s Daily
Meditations, Sunday, July 13, 2025,
“The Gift of Darkness”: “Center for Action and
Contemplation” <meditations@cac.org>