The Owl, by Richard Becker

The Owl, by Ilana Lee Becker (USA). 2016.

This Owl is Forever
(after a six-year-old
daughter’s pastel drawing)
 
​
Whether reading
by the window 
or at the computer 
showing it my back 
 
it’s glaring gaze 
cuts through me 
so I know 
this Owl’s forever.
.
 
Within the frame 
it’s huge red wings 
reach out 
beyond the frame
 
spread wide 
and open up 
opulent as the robing 
of an obese cardinal 
 
lifting faithful
to their feet
so I know 
the Owl’s forever.
.
 
What monstrous hands 
these wings if they
were human 
here on earth.
 
The owl forever stands 
on robust tarsals for 
when pummeling prey 
at 40 m.p.h. But her call 
 
is held at bay 
in two dimensions
hailing from the wall
in silent utterance.
.
 
In her head a curtain 
to a cancelled world
eyes penetrating time 
at three-sixty degrees
 
see through
me even up-side-down 
unchallenged by
earth’s changes. This Owl 
she is forever.
.
 
And below her feet 
tiny towns twinkle 
up to her in haze. 
Was she hissing 
 
in the air stalking 
vulnerable and pure?
Who said the Owl 
was wise was wrong.
 
This one here’s
no barn owl
and she don’t stand
on no rafter.
 
When we say our prayers 
this raptor could be taken 
for a fluffy red feather duster 
thick with purple pastel 
 
piping back of wings 
wiping pre-tense off
before or after--
yes this Owl’s forever.
.
 
Made from tree bark
chalk and milkweed 
she speaks now and says, 
“You are what you are. 
This will always be.” 
This Owl is forever after.

Richard Becker

Richard Becker is a concert pianist, composer and Director of Piano Study at the University of Richmond. He has had a Bread Loaf Scholarship for poetry, a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship as a poet, and, as a composer has been a MacDowell Fellow. Becker has published poetry in the U City Review, The Baltimore Review, America, Columbia, Cold Mountain Reviewand Main Street Rag.