On the way home from Quiet is the New Loud at the Longhorn tonight, I took what I think of as the back way. East to Chuckanut, then Thomas Road to Allen West. A small dark thing ran across Chuckanut, and then an owl flew from the top of one of the street signs on Thomas Road, out into the fields away from my headlights, wings all sepia the way everything looks in the dark out of the corner of your eye. I wanted to go back and see it again, not miss the moment when it had been sitting there, just before flight. I thought about all the photos I'd like to have but can't, and how I don't have enough, or the right, words for the way a bird flies, and for what those big wings do to you when you see them so close.
