Upon Viewing
the Corpse
of a Barred Owl
What can we say in the squashed face of death, brown-eyed and yellow beaked? I have no language for the beyond or after, only persistent questions about the present: Are those paws where the talons should be? Is this a hermaphrodite, half owl, half rabbit? Aren't we all?
My mother, for instance, was once a woman in love, with long, slender feet before they were clubbed by Velcro closures. And my father had the ears of an elephant. He spent a lifetime pressing them against the bottom of the sea, listening for oil. Now he wears stones on either side of his head. Granite, not diamonds.
And my brothers? What about them? Does Peter long for a hawk's eye, the eye of a voyeur, able to turn domestic life into a public drama? Would he wear a cape of fat, like a bull walrus during the rut, to the premier? Does Sam ache at his temples, longing for the horns of an antelope? Would he rather the tail of a red fox, or the fur of a seal and the playfulness of an otter? Does he think about death?
Lawrence's friend Daniel has been diagnosed with brain cancer. Do either of these alpha males—human men glad to be men, masters of the universe, holders of the golden coin—do they have a way to explain what will happen? What will Lawrence do to console the widow? And what about the orphans? This most human of brothers, who wears a suit and a tie, how will his sartorial care help him make the great transition if he's never longed to grow his own beating wings? How pedestrian to be human and sure of oneself.
And what is it I want? Fins on my feet, so I can sever the water, and gills, so I'd never have to come out for air? Or do I want the dry toadskin of a lizard with lashless eyes to bask in the desert sun? Does a cat have wings, or just want them? Is that what urges it to haunt the window by the feeder, teeth chattering with desire?
I'm divided by questions. If I learn the language, then will I belong? Or will I have to strive for meaning as well? And if I don't like what I might come to understand, what then? And what good is worry? As if worry could change things! All worry does is distract me from my anger at what I can't control.
I can't control death. I'm not sure I want to. Not my own, certainly. I only want to prevent that of others, my children's for instance. It's the one promise I've exacted from them: Let me go first. As if they'd listen. As if they could.
Did this owl make any promises? Did she keep them? Or are there fledglings waiting back at the nest, hoping for food? Did the owl get a good look at the driver as she crashed into the glass? Did the driver get a good look at her? And is that driver now walking around wounded, scratching her shoulders to stimulate the growth of feathers? What will they say to one another, the driver and the owl, when they meet in the afterlife, if there is one? Will there be blame, an angry confrontation: two lovers barking hot words at one another, both shouting, "I loved my life, why did you ruin it?" Then point their accusing fingers or wing feathers, whatever.
What happens when we die? Do we lie naked on the table, latex fingers probing for causes: lymphoma, gunshot, poison, the inhalation of water. Go ahead, call it drowning. Drowning.
I'm not a fish, but I will be. And after that, an owl. When, if ever, will I be a naked woman, breathing, with no expectations? Will I live to be ninety? Do I want to? Will you tell me, you who lay there, beak hooked into silence? Is it silence that kills? Or silence that tells us Death has robbed us of words?
If Death were just sleep, we'd welcome it, not be afraid. That it might be absence is the great fear. What will happen to me when I die? I'll stand naked before God—whatever God is. Maybe then I'll know.
Maybe I already do.
Maybe God is the majesty of this dead bird, part rabbit, part fish, or the washed bones at the mouth of the Ganges, or the cold stone on a Vermont Hill. Maybe God and Death are the same, the same air rising from the fire, the same cold descending from the Pole, the wind that whips across the artic, the water that tumbles over stone. Maybe God and Death are both the newborn baby and the toothless crone. In the end, does it matter? Who cares if we do or do not know?
Copyright 2006 by Deborah Lee Luskin
