A Parliament of Owls

The sky is aflutter with feathers tonight;
A parliament of owls or a murder of crows;
And just as day breaks over like drakes from cover
Or the breath between moans from a naked lover
I feel the glowing silence grow.

I’ve sleepwalked, it seems, from a dream
To a place where I never dreamed I’d be;
Sightless eyes, shattered ears, a fortune of fear
Pressing forward, or sideways, or backwards, to somewhere,
But never there, and only here.

Life is pretty dirty and a dirty pretty,
And here, now, in the iron crook of its arm,
I remember to remember, to stutter and stammer,
To bellow cocksure above the clamor,
To laugh, victorious, heartbroken, disarmed.