POETRY: Owl at my window

Owl at my window
By Noble Collins


Once,
the Owl and the Buzzard were sacred.
Only the Owl remains beautiful and revered.

The Early Ones soon discovered :
lofty Buzzard was a trickster, not worthy of ceremony.
Condemned to revulsion, surviving on carrion,
he fools no one anymore.

Buzzards only sense
The Owl knows

For several nights, now, he appears at my window.
He speaks to me in a dream:
“This way.”
“The Soul is aware in a way far different from the body.
The body knows nothing. It is carrion.”

Crow and Raven are cousins
Arrogant Crows ignore me.
Pompous Ravens mock me.

I linger, somewhere in a twilight place.
Pinholes large and small allow light through a black ceiling.
I am afraid of what is on the other side.

“This way” whooos the owl

The faint sound of a flute-whistle
drifts on the wind from a far away place,
its plaintive sighs and moans oddly comforting

A warm breeze rustles faded curtains.
I do not want to be cold,
or forlorn -
unobserved

How has it come to this?
After all the loves, the laughter
the fear and the conquest
the accolades and the acquisitions
the knowledge, the experience
the survival.

Why is Time the inexorable winner,
arrogant and pompous like the ravens and crows,
dumb, ugly and circling like the Buzzards?

This was not the plan, the dream, the goal.
Thousands should be mourning; praising my grand achievements.
My children and grandchildren
should be delighted at their inheritance.

Great Women should smile and remember.
Raconteurs should relate fine stories.
But now,
even my sighs are old and worn .

So, I listen to the Owl
He seems to know what he is talking about,
and I am growing too weak
to protest circling shadows