This is a poem, as promised,
all about owls. Hamlet wrote to
Ophelia, appealing to the same
stars as owls do when they strip
away the tall grass, looking for
the present finality of vermin.
This is a poem about owls.
Neither theoretical or astronomical.
It is about 1,000 million years ago,
when the ancestors of the owls flew
without a compass or North Pole-
A time when the blue lights arose from
beneath the snowfields, like polar auroras
turning the dusky red clouds against the tides.
This is a poem about owls.
How nearly circular in shape their eyes are.
And how they shine by their own fierce light,
like heat seeking missiles striking the earth
in halves. For the owl is the twin sister of Gemini,
more incomplete than wrong.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.