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Poem: 'Want'

Science in meter and verse

By Emily Tuszynska

Illustration of an owl flying in front of a sunset.
Credit: Masha Foya

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Edited by Dava Sobel

The owl came because he wants this scrap of woodland, wants the beeches and their hollow hearts, their cavities. He came because so long ago the farmer left his fields alone to grow their latent crop of trees that no one came to cut. The owl wants this wooded hilltop, its ancient oaks that stand among heaped quartz the farmer or his father or his father's father cleared. The owl wants the hilltop's crown of hollies, wants the deep-shade roost they've made; he wants this open branch that ends a wing-wide tunnel through the hollies' shelter, wants this place to watch, to rest and cast his pellets, wadded clumps of fur and bone the rain dissolves to show he wanted squirrels, and voles, and frogs, and once a huge black beetle. If you knew a wood would call an owl back, if you knew the owl's calls would fill the winter wood until another owl answered, wouldn't you want to leave the land alone to grow its woodland, wouldn't you want to grant the owls what they wanted?

Emily Tuszynska lives in Fairfax, Va., beside a 60-acre patch of successional hardwood forest growing on former farmland now slated for development. Her first collection of poetry, Surfacing, about the upheaval of early motherhood, was the winner of the 2023 Grayson Books poetry award.


This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poem-want


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