the omen

Never trust the unblinking gaze of the silent-in-the-night, ghost-like predator of a common screech owl. by my experience, it never ends well for you...

If you know where to look and what to look at, then there are many omens all around the canyon. The jeering and heckling of cackling crows. The playful twisting dance of micro dust devils, the murmur through the basalt rocks. The way the cats' fur bristle for the subtle barometric changes sparkling through the invisible air. The scream of a hungry hawk, announcing his prowess and agility. The deceitful, sly nature of garter snakes. The whispers in the breeze. The ebb and flow of the green river burbling with aquatic messages. The keening cries of wild coyotes and stray dogs. the scream of foxes and wild cats showing their distemper and lust.

Or even the doll like cry of an owl. drawled out, sharp. like a brass whistle in the dead of the void.

Of all the omens, of all the signs and hints and superstitions, it’s the owl that sends me into a panic more than the snake, the cat or the crow. It shakes me to my very core more than the dogs or the wind or the river. Because owls, in both of my hybridized cultures of Chippewa and Mexican...

Is an omen of death.

For if you hear them cry at you, take cover. Hide your eyes.

Do not try to spy on it. It won't end well for you

Do not even beckon it close. Do not draw its void like eyes.

Just...

Light a candle and some cedar. Do not try and shoo the creature away.

Close the curtains of the vast windows, block out the gaze.

Don’t even go outside.

My family thinks I'm a fool and an idiot for being distrustful of the owl. But I'm not. I have my reasons. I have very good reasons to be wary of this silent predator of the night.

Its not just a superstition of its true. Its not.

I heard the scream, the cry of an owl, at random times during the year. And each time I am overwhelmed with a feeling of dread. Every time.

My skin feels taut with a tightness that indicates something sinister. There is a tingling that feels like it is reaching out to grab hold of what energy that is reaching back, an itching to run from the energy at the same time. Even with my arms bare, there feels like a weight that clings to my skin, like saran wrap that was left in the sun. And after a while, the shrink wrap feeling is cooled, and feels like it is being pulled from my skin, like limp spiderwebs. I hold my breath, fighting the feeling to curl up and hide. the itch that is not quite ready to scratch, the tickle that is on the wrong side of painful.

Owls are omens of death. Of loss, and wickedness. But death is at the front, tall and quiet and sinister as it's unblinking eyes watch me fret and pray.

Because every time I hear one...

Someone I love dies.