Two Poems

CB Follett

The Owl Is a Poem

a flash of wings crossing the moon's
wash of light. What he hears
are the wires of small lives. What
he sees are stars of movement.
The owl lights the night

with his whirr of passage. He flies
through gates of darkness,
withholding even his shadow,
yet the ground below shudders
and voles and rabbits

hunker and wait. Their paths
collide or not. The owl swoops,
talons flexed and shining.
Much depends on each catch.
The owl is a poem gliding,

silent, seeking the unwary,
the momentarily careless. His wings
unfurl like the sails of a boat in storm,
snapping open, held motionless
above the dampening grasses.

Across the meadow, the moon
lays its spill over the land, and the owl
keeps to the shadow-edge.
The moon is not a friend of owl.
The owl returns to the tree,

talons gripping the bark and dinner. He folds
his wings and calls softly into rising morning,
hoo hoo¸ sending his news
out to the neighborhood and listens, listens
for an answer, and she, too, is a poem.

***

The Hour of the Owl

And he says he's climbed
more than once
to the windswept acme
of the North Tower
of the Golden Gate Bridge
at 2 a.m., or 3
the hour of the owl
up the slippery, rounded, orange cable
holding thin guide-ropes of steel
by the light of whatever light there is.

And, yes, he's done it
more than once. Young then,
and out of sorts with life
it seemed logical
even delicious.

Risk is that funny thing
we wear lightly back when,
then try to shrink-wrap our sons & daughters
but they break through
as they should

as we, remembering back,
tremble at what we came through
most of us

Now, at the other end of time, withdrawal:
physical and whatever tides of fear
creep into the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum

once I swore I never would
but often now I say no.
The world closes down
like some terrible reduction of sight
where edges blur
and the out there shrinks and compacts.

Once I traveled rapids
of which I had no knowledge or control
and hung over space
and worked my way up
or leaned close to an edge.

Now I am uncertain even where the step is,
and streets are all one-way.
I listen to his tales
and wonder if he feels it yet.

CB Follett is author of 6 books of poems, the most recent, And Freddie Is My Darling, 2009, and several chapbooks, including Houses, 2011. At the Turning of the Light won the 2001 National Poetry Book Award. She is Editor/Publisher of Arctos Press, publisher and co-editor of RUNES, a Review of Poetry, 2001-2008. She has several nominations for Pushcart Prizes, a Marin Arts Council Grant for Poetry, and is the current Poet Laureate of Marin County, CA.

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