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.
The oak limb in the yard, bending,
Close to breaking,
Required careful tending.
Upon my waking,
The tree was on the ground.
I hadn’t felt the earth shaking
Or heard its falling sound.
In a few days it was gone,
Its thick stump ground.
I planted another one,
A sapling depending
On me like father to son . . .
Already ascending.
It’s possible to destroy even hell
And turn evil to dust
With the dropping of shell after shell.
What remains is one man’s lust
Mating with his own cold will,
Giving birth to blood and rust.
Each bullet or bomb’s a pill
That plugs a hole in his brain,
Which is still,
As is Ukraine,
Where a young child fell
And didn’t get up again —
Her killer dares her now to tell.
Cold air slipped in the window
Left open overnight.
It’s 100 below zero
And all is either black or white.
Ice leans against our home
As if meaning to fight.
The wind chants a lifeless Om.
“This is our new Ice Age
Under a sun silver as chrome,”
Says the nodding sage.
There’s no bitterness or woe
I could scratch on this page —
The ink has ceased to flow.
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.
I slept as the doorbell rang.
When I rose they were gone.
A sweet earworm sang and sang.
Was it really no one?
The day raced by as days will,
A bullet from a rubber gun
With only duration to kill.
If I can’t remember dreams,
What I forget of life are dreams until
Remembered (when they seem
Like hammers and bangs).
But most often they gleam
Afar — frozen gilded boomerangs.
There were a thousand crows
Asleep in their rookery
Before the winter sun rose.
I rise with them, insomniac weary,
And pour into the hollow
Of my brain the blustery
Anticipations to follow,
What I must and cannot do,
And what time will allow.
One crow caws. I answer “You!
Think you!” as though he knows
The universe might offer a clue.
As he staggers away, it snows.
