Barred Owls have a distinctive hooting call of 8–9 notes, described as “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” This call carries well through the woods…. During courtship, mated pairs perform a riotous duet of cackles, hoots, caws and gurgles. – Cornell Labs “All About Birds: Barred Owls”
Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?
You could cry at the tenderness of the question.
Greeting of the barred owl, that’s who.
It doesn’t have to be an elaborate recipe: a simple stew,
a stir fry, a sandwich cut diagonally. Love is a stir, an offering.
Who cooks for you?
There are other kinds of calls too:
If we’re lucky someday a cackling duet again, laughter in the kitchen.
Greeting of the barred owl, that’s who.
You won’t always feel this lonely—your breath so newly
loud in grief’s silent streets. A distinctive shape on the telephone wire:
Who cooks for you?
Sometimes it’s all you can do not to sigh a long falling Hoo,
Half expect an answer. No light already on, nothing warming.
Greeting of the barred owl, that’s who.
Though it may feel like a bowl of darkness, try even a few
Grains of love offered to the self. Nearby, your silent-winged companion.
Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?
Greeting of the barred owl, that’s who.
—
Sierra Nelson is a Seattle-based poet, essayist, and performance artist. Nelson’s books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions) and collaborative I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press), and editor of Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry (World Enough Writers). A MacDowell Fellow and Carolyn Kizer Prize winner, Nelson’s work has appeared in King County Buses, the Seattle Aquarium, Slovenian Natural History Museum, Cascadia Field Guide, and I Sing the Salmon Home anthology.
