from Other Stones, Kinder Temples


Tonight, an Owl         

an owl’s call chalks an outline around the night
scrawling shape on the air from its hidden post
high in the canopy of the creaking pines

eager talons clutch a green branch leaking pitch
it hoots its five-beat call, two long, three short
Morse code for seven, five equals seven—

translation into an obsolete tongue—
its wild cry flung from a perch teases the   
urge to concoct gods and grammars from          

language still swaddled, still soft-skulled
and pliable, cradled in the upper reaches,
slung from a beak wrought for tearing flesh

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