Barn Owl

(album: Thirteen Ways To Look At Birds - 2019)

Daybreak: the household slept
I rose, blessed by the sun
A horny fiend, I crept out with my father's gun

Let him dream of a child, obedient, angel-mind
Old no-sayer, robbed of power by sleep
I knew my prize, who swooped home at this hour
With day-light riddled eyes to his place on a
High beam in our old stables
To dream light's useless time away

I stood, holding my breath
In urine-scented hay, master of life and death
A wisp-haired judge whose law would punish
Beak and claw

My first shot struck, he swayed, ruined
Beating his only wing as I watched
Afraid by the fallen gun
A lonely child who believed death clean and final

Not this obscene bundle of stuff
That dropped and dribbled through the loose straw
Tangling in bowels, and hopped blindly closer

I saw those eyes that did not see
Mirror my cruelty, while the wrecked thing that could not
Bear the light nor hide hobbled in its own blood

My father reached my side
Gave me the fallen gun
"End what you have begun"

I fired, the blank eyes shone once into mine
And slept, I leaned my head upon
My father's arm and wept, owl blind in early sun
For what I had begun