The Owl

I want to tell you about an owl. 4th June 2008 8:50pm
According to my Frost ancestors from County Clare, Ireland, the owl was their seal.
Personally, I have felt myself drawn to the attributes of the white-tailed black cockatoo, the bird that visits here each year to devour the pine cones.
But the owl once lived and roosted in the giant Jarrah through my window.
When the night was still, and this space was seldom quiet for the screeching of possums (declaring what property was theirs and where unseen boundaries had been crossed).
When the night was still you could hear the owl, and its hoot-hoot would echo across the valley.
But that was years ago.
When I was a child my grandmother lived in Thelma Street, and I remember very vividly the pine plantation at the end of her road.
It seemed dark and foreboding and now here I am, sitting smack in the middle of it, pondering whether the forest that supported the owl will ever return.
Everything is impermanent, nothing remains forever.
So maybe this view in front of my window will one day return to the trees and shrubs that once stood there.
And then, perhaps, even the owl might return, and then the kangaroo and screaming possum.
Imagine that.