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                                                                    __________                  "Tonight, an Owl" appeared in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Iodine Poetry Journal.                                                            Home / Escapee / Stories / Poems / Non-fiction / Contact / Links