Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Strigidae
…the nights were soft / With owls
—Robert Hass
With what inner need do we forget
the hawk-beak, meat-hunger
of a reclusive rusty lover?
Why favor instead the seductive
call, the whoo and oooh of owl hymn,
the logic of silent flight and heavy
feather? Why delight in fixed hoop-eye
and swivel gaze or embrace a cartoon
torso and forget the rip and wrest,
the chipmunk swallowed whole, reduced
to pellets? How to condone a bleak essence,
the skill in every talon, slashing?
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks. For more about her work, check her website at wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
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