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.
I have searched the homely grail
At work, on the summit of Pike’s Peak,
And in the bills and ads in the mail.
I can only guess at what I seek,
Except that it is lovely and wild.
(Oh, if only I could steal a peek.)
I’ve searched since I was a child,
Less curious than hungry, grasping,
Nothing inside me calm or mild.
The wanting is the asp’s sting,
A surrender to the jailor’s flail.
I cling to the preying roc’s wing,
Without knowing how to fail.
Afraid of heights, I climbed a tower
Made of steel and wooden stairs.
At the top I watched clouds cower
From the sun. I whistled ancient airs
As I teetered on a platform
And vultures flew by in pairs.
I existed in the eye of a storm
With no lightning, wind, or rain
Blasting my human form.
I refused to celebrate the pain
That grew inside me on the hour.
I saw myself look down again —
Fall like a meteor shower.
Music in time: evanescent,
Humming ghosts of tempo,
Neither past nor present,
Equally fast and slow,
Epitomes of entropy.
Violins sing, horns blow
A memory of melody,
A broken string on a bow,
One chord of a threnody.
Staffs roll row on row
In their staccato descent,
A momentless flow
Of tones, incandescent.
My body is richly scarred
As if caught in an avalanche.
It’s crisscrossed and barred —
Lines of sewn flesh branch,
Nose and brow bear hyphens,
Once pink areas, burned, blanch.
Time ravages us with its sins,
Which have nothing to do with will,
But the vulnerability of skins.
Not one baby’s molecule is still
In us after fifty years, discarded
Without changing us, until
We are perfect again, unmarred.
