“A gravel road leads from the house to open fields that border

on both its sides, then ends abruptly

like an incomplete sentence where dense woods loom up

with depths dark as night. Here the great horned owl

makes its home, whose mating calls persist well into the predawn

when the grip of darkness begins to loosen

and dawn’s light filters through, spreading over fields and flashing

up against my house with such intensity it might set it on fire.’’

— From “Morning of the Great Horn Owl,’’ by Maurice Rigoler