Good news! There are men
who stop for wounded owls
who track them into the woods
cradle them in their Carhartt jackets
till the wildlife guy arrives.
After a 12-hour shift, Chance
was driving home, bone-tired at 6 a.m.—
no time to brake for the hurt owl, miraculously
centered between the pickup’s wheels.
I’m the owl guy at work now, Chance said.
Rehabbed and released weeks later,
the barred owl ignored his What’s up, buddy?
and soared out of that Walmart parking lot
to reclaim its realm of sky over Waterford.
—
Barbara Ungar’s sixth book, After Naming the Animals, is new from The Word Works, which also published Immortal Medusa and Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. Prior books include Save Our Ship, which won the Snyder Publication Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Poetry Prize. A professor emerita, she lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. www.barbaraungar.net
