Today's poem is by Wendy Videlock

Captured
       

Who in this room hasn't heard
the swishing sound of an old broom,
the vanishing sound of an unspoken word,
or under a laughing, lonesome moon,
the sound of the owl's distinctive who ?

What is it about the owl that makes
the hour irrelevent? And yes,
superstition brims, blooms and charms—
asking us are they bewitched,
cursed or irrevocably wise,

are we frightened by their feather-
heavy presence or are we blind...
surely our interest has something to do
with the influence of the moon,
with the late night endless question

or maybe it has something to do
with effortlessness. Who
hasn't been silenced by that glide,
by those penetrating eyes?
They go from terrifying

to rapturous. Just like us.
If we've made of them an omen
and a mystery what on earth
have they made of us?
It isn't the moral, but the heart

of the story, the story told
in the dead of night. And now,
in the early morning light
what the owl leaves behind
is something to unpack, to ponder,

to place before the mirror of the world.
Whatever the story, whatever their
implicit nature, whatever the rhyme,
whatever the reflection or the dissonance,
we only know they capture us.

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Copyright © 2024 Wendy Videlock All rights reserved
from Able Muse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission