“Who, who,” I cry with the owl, lonely on the rooftop;
”Who will hear me, and who will answer?”
Flying dark with the bats, I send out prayers,
trying to locate God by their echoes.
I am as far from Sunday as may be,
as far from rest.

A still, small voice might whisper,

“Peace, now, for I have answered the owl
and satisfied the winged thing.“

“I am beyond your dreams,
yet even when you wake I will be near.
Though I neither slumber, nor sleep,
yet in me you will find your ease.
I am all that in the night,
you cannot see.”

First published at the Episcopal Café

Psalm 102:6-7

I am like an owl of the wilderness,
    like a little owl of the waste places

I lie awake;
    I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.