Like a cross between a hinge
in need of oil and a girl
just learning to whistle,
all night you shreep out there,
little owl, maybe thirty feet
from the house. I float on
the surface of sleep, hearing you
wingclap around, a noisy hunter,
though somehow you manage
to turn off the voice of
a night wanderer in mid-chord.
When I let the dog out
at five a.m. you flap from
a tree six feet away; all day
you’re somewhere in sight,
a new lump on the trunk of a pine,
or treed cat, stoic under
the black straggle of crows
you draw from miles around,
who know that later, when
your voice deepens into your chest,
you’ll slip through their roost
snipping heads off. Meanwhile,
you’ve adopted our lamplit
domesticity, wanting to come in
where all week I’ve been trying
to write about choughs, rooks
and jackdaws who gather
in first light’s rain around
Irish chimney pots and harangue
in peat-smoked gutturals
like their names-you drag me
home to the poetry under my nose.
BACKTALK
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