Silent Seizure
an owl in a box
Iola Mae is a quiet girl, filled with noise. Even her name, eye-ohh-lahh-maay makes her tongue roll up inside her mouth.
Her mother is a loud woman, filled with mission. When she calls her daughter, vowels fly through the air. Time to go. Time to rush. There is a creature in a box in the front seat. The car is full of thump, thump and owl, owl.
Tires spin on gravel, talons skid on cardboard. The car rolls backwards and bumps down the dirt driveway. The box lurches against the seat back. Iola, safely belted in the rear, imagines a heavy fury on her lap that shifts precipitously across her bare legs towards her stomach. Stop. Forward. The hum of smooth pavement will follow all the way to the animal shelter. Rescue runs are familiar. No turns, only so many stop signs. Her mother sighs loudly. The radio dials to the church channel.
Glory be to God for dappled things *
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim
The wink-tick of releasing her seat belt is swallowed by the hymn. She spies on the cardboard box, its lid folded shut or nearly shut. The gap is dark and then it is not. Yeh-lo-owwwl-eye.
Bits of sound fall like tiny planes whose engines cut in the sky far above the sea. Without racket, clamor, roar or din, palisades build and tsunamis fail. No ears nor tongue, hands and feet. Only her eye peeled and adazzled.
Then her vision dims. The breach in the box lid goes dark.
All things counter, original, spare, strange
The croon of rolling tires catches her up like a hammock strung between bending palms. Her mother sighs loudly. The car brakes gently for the first stop sign.
Whhhdjshhhdjh.
*Pied Beauty 1880 by Gerard Manley Hopkins