Cover of the Sierra Club Foundation's Annual report
Spotted Owls - painting by M Morgan Warren

In February, 1997, Morgan Warren was invited to be
the guest of the distinguished Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco as artist-in-residence. 

During her stay, a director of the Sierra Club Foundation approached her and her work was subsequently selected to illustrate the cover of the Foundation's annual Report.

"Here in Peace", the piece featured, depicts a pair of spotted owls perched deep in old-growth forest.

Morgan wished to portray the owls' point of view:

Here in Peace

We ask nothing
Only to live here
In the green stillness
Far from sounds
Of metal and man:

Before he existed
We knew the aeons;
Down from the dawn age
We raised our chicks,
Hunted and were content. 

Now men claim all:
Clamouring, breeding
And building strange nests
Side by side
Without thought or respect. 

We ask them
To leave us in peace
As part of the living earth:
They were chosen
To guard and cherish 

All the rest of us
Who dwell in its lands and oceans.

M. Morgan Warren
 

"Here in Peace" by M. Morgan Warren