0 Elf Owl

Long ago
in an August heat
I saw an elf owl
emerge from his nest
inside a saguaro spire;
he sat on the lip of the little hole --
hollowed countless years ago,
bored deftly into the cactus flesh
by some ingenious Gila woodpecker --
and contemplated the endless plain.

Against the hide
of his heat-scorched home
he might have been a feather
caught upon the spines
but he was not that;
he was a warrior,
armed, fearless, with
liquid, amber eyes that
knew and understood
the cracks and folds
of twice-baked earth,
the crumbled shards of bone.

He rose
upon the currents of heat
braving the dark,
the uncertainties,
to climb and ride
the rollers of the wind
scan the blistered land
and take dominion over night.

--Lucia G., 64