OWLS IN THE PARK

I can hear owls tonight. I wish I knew which kind. They’re calling to each other in the park. It’s a very gentle sound; a kind of lilting two note song. He sings terwit, she sings to-woo, on silvery wing, as owls often do.

I like owls. I like their massive eyes and their bushy eyebrows. I like the way their feather patterns make it sometimes look like they’re smiling, and I like the little beak that could be a wise old nose for a pair of spectacles. I like their folded wings and the way they stretch out like fingers when they fly. Oh and the silent, masterful flight! Through trees and woods, circling over fields by moonlight, waiting for just that tiny shimmer of silver grass below.

There’s an old story that Genghis Khan avoided death because an owl perched on a tree he was hiding in. So they’re still lucky in Mongolia. Although, as far as I know, Genghis Khan, the Twelfth Century ruler of the Mongol Empire which ravished the known world and most of Eastern Europe, is now dead regardless.

Here in the west of course, owls are more a symbol of wisdom than of death. I’m taking their night-time courting song as a sign that wisdom would be a good thing for me to ask for. And indeed it would!

Difficult day today. I have to do a presentation on something I’m just not confident about; it’ll be fine, just one of those ones with a lot of unknowns in it. I like talking about things I know about. I don’t much like facing barbed questions and having to pretend I’m okay with not knowing the answers.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” I imagine somebody asking, incredulously.

“Well I can do my best to find out!” I say, forcing a cheery smile onto my otherwise sheepish face. Trouble is, it’s always the face that gives me away. I’d be a terrible choice for the next Bond actor. Although clearly, not just because I get flustered in tricky presentations.

Owls don’t get flustered do they. They’re out there, cool-headed hunters, dark eyes glistening in the trees, calling each other, carefully, strategically planning their next move. They are the lions of the trees! Invincibles of the night! The graceful kings and white-crowned queens of the woodland: elegant, silent, beautiful, deadly, and wise.

I rather like the idea of being that level-headed and silent, in situations where the most sensible thing to do is to shut up and listen. Sometimes that really is the wisest strategy.

Speaking of which...