Ten below zero in the woods.
At the foot of a pine a fluff
of indigestible hair and bone
coughed up by a great horned owl.

A great horned will take on a bobcat
or coyote to protect the young
late-winter ground-feeding chicks.
I'd never dare go near one.

Now it's midwinter nesting season,
the larger female exciting
the male, the eggs sometimes laid
in the corner of an eagle's nest--

which, perhaps intimidated,
the eagle tolerates. Low orange sun
frazzles in naked trees. The cold
seems unbreakably plastic,

conforming to every texture
and rendering everything rough
and stubborn. Pity the creatures
the owl entirely swallows,

digesting the soft parts and storing
bone, hair, and hide in its crop.
There's some obscure lesson here,
something I'd rather not learn.

The owl pellet, as the coughed-up
mass is called, is a big one,
a solid object I pocket
to show to eager naturalist friends.

The low sun winks in the maples.
I begin the slow trudge home
with the owl pellet safe in my coat.
The tracks of fox, squirrel, and deer

hardly distract me. The rumpled
hillscape offers some resistance,
but the effort of breaking the crust
of snow and plunging knee-deep

against a decided resistance
confirms my hope that I'm still whole
enough to function, only partly
digested by the world I love.

(published in Birmingham Poetry Review)