Great Horned Owls
—An In-titled Poem 1
Two hooters
at the wood’s edge
teased dawn:
her ardent song
was stern and slow
as a water hole’s glower;
he sang lower-toned
howls to answer…
We heard and learned
how want’s words are
honed as talons
on a whet-stone;
sweet as the gods’ laws
are earthen;
sad as the snow-thaw
when a stag lows
to a doe’s ghost:
who— slew her?— who?— who?—
We heard
one lone heart’s
hooted dearth
sate another’s;
learned the not-seen
song that leads two owls
to an old, torn nest
on a stone ledge—
there, soon,
to dote on new owlets.
Oh, when hooters are near, how we swoon!
How we need
to hear the trees share
the world’s good—
and to wonder…
—
1 The In-titled Poem, Stephanie L. Harper’s invented poetry form, is composed exclusively of the letters appearing in its title, with no letter occurring within any single word in the poem more times than it does in its title.
*
Love Poem with Eight Answers
—For Bob
The point of trying to imagine
the face of God is you
living on. Because God is
the world’s cold in-betweens
imbued with lonesome’s antidote.
Which is Everything that has ever been
and therefore always will be…
Just as our first kiss seven years ago
in an airport parking garage in Albuquerque
still quivers in my knees and blazes my cheeks
like homing beacons in an Indiana winter’s squall.
God has need of nothing but needs met
and I have the eyes I need to see you;
ears to resound with your most insolent
invectives and tenderest cries;
a mouth that tastes your tears’ salt
as keenly as your joys’ honey…
And I shall subsist on all you are
forever brimming in me.
***
(Featured image from Pexels)