Twice through my bedroom window <br />I've seen the horned owl drop from the oaks to panic <br />the rabbit in my neighbor's backyard. <br />Last night he paced for an hour across the top <br />of the cage, scrutinizing <br />the can of water, the mound of pellets, <br />turning his genius to the riddle <br />of the wire, while under him <br />the rabbit balled like a fat carnation in the wind. <br />Both of the terriers yapped from their porch <br />but the owl never flinched, pacing, <br />clawing the wire, spreading wings like a gray cape, <br />leaping, straining to lift the whole cage, <br />and the cage rocking <br />on its stilts, settling, and rocking again, <br />until he settled with it, paused, <br />and returned to a thought. <br />And the rabbit, ignorant of mercy, <br />curled on itself in that white drift <br />of feathers? <br />Wait, three years and I haven't escaped the child <br />I saw at Northside the night <br />my daughter was born, <br />a little brown sack of twigs <br />curled under glass, eyes bulging, <br />trembling in the monitors, <br />and the nurses <br />rolling the newborns out to nurse, <br />and the shadows sweeping the nursery.<br /><br />David Bottoms<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-owl-3/
