Nest, Terzata #48

The owl fell from its nest

And cringed among roots

Yards away, fanning its breast.

We couldn’t hear the hoots

Of his mother. He made no sound,

Afraid of raptor brutes.

He was lucky he’d been found.

I took off my shirt.

We wrapped him round and round,

Carried him to his tree, unhurt,

And let him loose. He didn’t rest —

Rising on claws, he girt

The trunk with wings up to his nest. 

Blind Pew (N. C. Wyeth), Sonnet #299

A knife's as good as a drink to a corpse,
Or so Blind Pew might have said, but he's dead.
How does a blind bastard commit murder?
At night, when everyone is blind, of course.
His senses like an owl's swiveling head,
He'd think, my prey's eyes? Nothing absurder!
A barred owl once perched on my shepherd's hook
Bird feeder -- I watched him for an hour.
He'd scan the ivy by the house, then look
At me, then back where some creature cowered.
His black lusterless eyes looked blind, like holes
Of night in a graying sky, unblinking.
He dropped and flew off with a mouse or vole,
Like Blind Pew, satiated, unthinking.