Poem for Monday

Discovered yesterday in The Washington Post Book World 'Poet's Choice' column by Edward Hirsh:

Night Owl
By Michele Wyrebek

You are nearing the land that is life.
You will recognize it by its seriousness.

-- Rilke

Driving my bad news the back way home
I know I'm in the land that is life
when I reach my favorite stretch of road -- fields
flat and wide where corn appears soon after
planting, the soil tilled, night-soaked
and crumbled into fists.
Ferguson's barn is somewhere
at the end of this long arm of tar
and as I near it, something grazes the back
passenger-side door, luffs parallel to my car --
a huge owl on headlight spray floating,
holding night over the hood to see
if this moving thing is real, alive,
something to kill -- then gliding in
close as if to taste glass.
The road levitates, buffeted on a surf
of light, the fog-eaten farm disappearing
as I ride into starlessness, cells conspiring
so I am bright-flecked and uplifted -- is this
what it feels like to be chosen -- to be taken
under the wing of something vast
that knows its way blindly?


Am reading:

' GoldenEye story for , "For James"
's Bean Drabbles
's A/B-A/F story for , "Never Forget"

And gacked from Lanna, with amusement and much hope that certain people won't make any comments:


food
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