North, night, late, and the branches fraught

with ice as they are now;

first one owl

like an oboe in the upper dark,

low, stark,

then farther off another;

and how,

as the time between their cries grew wide,

they never moved,

as if what each one sought

was not the other

but the distance that the other was,

and cried

but to align their silences.

--from 'The Ice Storm'; Christian Wiman