The Owl's Christmas

It hasn't snowed for a couple of days and the stories the animal tracks tell grow more complex in my yard. Here's where the deer bounded out of the driveway when I pulled in two nights ago--twelve feet between the prints. I see signs of other deer, and dogs, and a rabbit and a racoon all the way back by the fenceline. They hold a silent yard party while I sleep. But this mouse track, it just ends in an indecipherable scuffle.

The dark of the year
when the mouse's funeral
is the owl's Christmas.