The Night Owl

[emilylou06]

I've never seen an owl at night,
but I wonder how isolated he would feel.
When every laugh;
every wish,
extinguishes on the moon.
When the fears he hides by day,
slowly creep back in with the exhausted blackness.
Every shadow is a foe.
Every noise is a threatened word
issued from tightened lips.
Is the scurrying below hope?
The owl swoops for its kill,
digging his claws in a warm,
juicy body without a pause for thought.
When night vision kicks in
the world eerily creeps by before him.
Nothing can see him.
He is alone.

I think about the owl as I lay in my bed
listening to rain drops patter the window.
Does he hide from the storm,
or face his destiny?
I choose to believe,
alone or not,
that he hunts tonight.
He may not understand
why he was chosen to be a creature of the dark.
I know I would wonder.
I would question my Creator with perseverance
until the sun rose in the morn.

Yet, at the sweet moment
when night and day intertwine in a dancing dawn,
I would get my answer.
The splendors of daybreak will illuminate before me
in beauty unspeakable.
The evils of the night will slink away
into a black abyss of yesterday.
And as I head to my slumber I would pass by other owls
with the same story.
They'd sing in my ear a precious melody of hope.
The sun always rises,
they trill,
no matter the darkness you have seen.



God bless, and thanks for reading!

[DickZ]

Wow, emilylou, I don't know much about poetry - prose poems or otherwise. I had never even heard the term prose poem until AuntShecky used it referring to this.

But I sure think this looks a lot better in this format than it did as a story, and for some reason it reads a lot better too! Great job! I'm looking forward to more of your writing.

[emilylou06]

Wow, emilylou, I don't know much about poetry - prose poems or otherwise. I had never even heard the term prose poem until AuntShecky used it referring to this.

But I sure think this looks a lot better in this format than it did as a story, and for some reason it reads a lot better too! Great job! I'm looking forward to more of your writing.

I agree, I didn't know what she was talking about either, but I decided to try it out... And I don't like to be proven wrong, but I was. Haha. Thanks for the comment!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Well, God Bless Aunt Shecky, she is right every once in a while! However your poem read as a prose poem, it reads wonderfully in this form. You build so sure-footedly and with such clear-eyed observation of the owl and its life. Do please submit more!