The owl who sleeps in the moon by day
shakes stars from his wings
when the darkness opens to allow him to pass
to the world with lights
burning low in its windows. He flies on silent wings
over golf course and pond, from
a bare branch to a rooftop,
and settles on a lost shadow
that follows rats on their way through the grass
until a minute turns into the second
it takes to tear the moonlight open
and leave behind its bones
to shine where they are nestled
in the softness of the call that settles
like a leaf on the ground where it lands.
David Chorlton
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