D.C. The Owl


Blind in her left eye,
she’ll never be released.  Once a year
I peer into her room, see her perch. 

Her caretakers say she’s trained
for school kids, is great in groups.
Her life seems pretty good,
though I’m not privy to her secrets.  

My head, one of many, pops in
for twenty seconds.  It’s enough.  

I catch her eye.
She stares me down.   





Stillness and Owls 


Dindi has lost four cherished Aunts,
two uncles, both parents, two friends.
With Aunt Edna dying,
her mom’s one surviving sister,
in the waiting room she half reads
People magazine, remembers
Edvard Munch’s Death in the Sick-Room,
the taut faces, a single breath
could cave in the walls.  

Edna had two rotten marriages,
an estranged son, years when she
kept the TV on thirteen hours a day.  

She had the best laugh in the family,
as if several owls had gotten loose,
all hooting at once. 
Stillness.  

Strangers pace before elevators. 
A doctor asks if they’d like to see her
before she goes.  Dindi stays
while the others make one last visit. 
A cold hand can’t contain Edna’s laugh.  

She thinks she hears it, sobs,
starts laughing herself,
freeing the owls.