I haven't seen an owl yet, but I've been keeping company with a tree just outside the window over the sink in my cottage. I've been keeping company with a lot of trees, actually, in hopes of seeing an owl, but this tree, in particular, has drawn my attention enough over the last two weeks that its inhabitant now stares, implacably, back at me.
Do you see the face? Initially, I thought it was the Virgin Mary, but then I realized that it was just Ezra Pound with a Virgin Mary drape around him.
It occurred to me that the prolonged solitude, the delving into the deepest parts of my interior, and the wrestling with narrative were fine-tuning my imagination enough that the lines separating that interior with the outside world, even reality, were a bit blurry. But Facebook, in addition to making birthdays absolutely over-the-top and its ability to sign you up for various choirs that sing one long and beautiful, if boring note, also confirms your sanity. It also confirms that I have a rocking group of friends. At last check there were over thirty comments in response to my posting that photo, a hilarious list whose variety suggests the face to be a kind of Rorschash blot.
Tell me who you see. Leave a comment here if you haven't already on Facebook.
