The White Owl by Richard Chapman

I'm posting this work by my poet pal Richard Chapman of Butte, Montana. To me he is the poet Butte has always wanted to give us. I hope you enjoy the medicine of his owl, "The White Owl" and like Lyn and I are moved and brought wellness by it's mystic powers.
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Subject: The White Owl
Date: February 15, 2010 3:22:21 PM CST
To: rondolyn@arvig.net

Hello Ron,

I told you I have something for you. You may use this for Lyn or yourself. It is like magic, it came like magic. In a medicine bag which I have never had it may have said to me you need one. Or a friend needs one. Pass this on. The meeting was mine, but the power from its source is for distributing. Here have some, and grab hold. For it is moving.

In Friendship
RdeCC

White Owl

I made coffee and dumped the garbage.
On a chemistry acid spill proof top
I laid out my laptop and began editing
Programs and screens to an interface.
It was simple to fall behind key strokes
Into the walls as time glided silent,
Lifting at last to roost on a post
As I mended color and seconds together.

That afternoon we set up electric drives
And were waiting on generators
To cycle and I thought to go home
It would be a long drive from Gilford.
Six hours if it didn't snow over
Or fate found cause to strand me,
On a solitary ice polished road.
I was just beginning my floe south
The seats were warming behind my back
And the sun caught in thick
Layers of clouds was a brightish form,
Diffused its beam through cotton wool,
But here ahead on a power pole
With the wires worried in frost
And the cross arm layered in snow
Sat a white owl, perfectly set
The snowy plains drifted over
Were unbroken white like its breast.
Its eyes, huge with a spline of feathers
In sunflower circumference round centers of black
And its head squat followed me,
But it was those iconoclastic eyes
Which penetrated my Christian spirit and put me nearer
To a sweet grass omen, for it waited,
Where our crosses would pass.
"Which side of darkness did you come?"
I didn't slow down for its answer.
It's pure profile used to the limbs of night
It's bearing formed by the soft star light
And wings so soft they don't express flight.
I wouldn't stop and open my door
If I did, he'd of flown breaking our spell.
No I kept to the road, watching him
I drove beyond his deliberate look.
He is a primal flash a frozen lightning bolt
Perched above a pure white plain,
No gold or silver to break our communication.
Our visitation was good luck- I knew it to be
For I felt a stride open in my thoughts
I felt like my hand found a running brace
And I grabbed the slipping strand for position
I reached out for our human race.
We are familiar with two sides from now
There are as many truths in the future
As we've drug along from our past.
The old man's wisdom slung homeward
On travois, rutting soils over time
With lengthy long lasting reminders.
And my land ahead spread out like the sea
White and frozen waves unmarked
Where I look at the distant horizon no key
On wings if we could only fly
To what is there pulling like a magnet
Our human desires?
Which side of the present do you come?
He needn't speak. I asked with my mind.
American Natives chanted scripture for its wings
Imitated his body by dance and loosened head
How they could be moved during a hunt
For tribes' sake used it's spellbind as guidance
A white branch, a snowy limb, an arctic air
A vision staked their path, it doesn't happen often
Creates belief as a staff capped in bronze,
As sure as rubies pressed in layers of gold
And held high before us to bow to its presence.
He's a courier behind or beyond my present
One white owl and me a passer-by
If you could believe like I have felt
It meant for the whole of us to try.