The Owl

Silent keeper of thresholds,

you rise without sound,

feathers stitched from dusk,

eyes holding the long dark.

You do not announce yourself.

You arrive.

Between heartbeat and breath,

between what is seen

and what is known.

You are not comfort.

You are clarity.

The one who watches

when others turn away,

who sees what moves

in the margins of fear.

Your gaze does not flinch.

It settles on decay,

on the small, quick lives

that survive by hiding.

You teach us

that truth is not loud,

and wisdom is not kind.

Owl, you do not chase the light.

You master the dark.

You remind us that night

is not an absence,

but a domain

ordered, alive,

and unforgiving.

In your wings,

there is patience sharpened into skill.

In your silence,

there is knowing without illusion.

You teach us this:

to endure is not always to resist

sometimes it is to see clearly,

and strike only

when it matters.