Today's poem is by Rolly Kent

Owl
       

His territory is himself, his voles
and lizards, his ridgepoles, his eucalyptus.
For years, the same owl, the same hushed huh-hu-
hu-huu. But tonight, though he sits in the tree
outside the house, he seems to be calling
from a long way off, just as my age now

once was too far ahead to even call it
the future. No owl could be that old; yet
even owl song can reach the outer
stanza of what a self is, inquiring
of the night huh-hu-who else? And when
nobody counters in the language of owls

he goes on sounding out—how far to
the end of the street, the hill, the next
hill, the end of the sky and the end
of himself; and if no answer comes,
he negotiates with the silence. Then
it is so quiet I hear only distance.

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Copyright © 2024 Rolly Kent All rights reserved
from Phone Ringing in a Dark House
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission