Today's poem is by Jen Karetnick

The Nature of Nurture
       

At dusk, the screech owls warn us with a bounce
of song that we've come too near the recesses
they've accessed, their found nests, in the live oaks.

They target heads—ours, and the dogs we walk.
We wear bright-brimmed hats, neon the collars
of the animals, brighten cell phone

screens to announce our presence. But such small,
otherworldly suns fool just a few. One
night, a fly-by swooping cranes us upward.

We find an owl, melting into her
tiled backsplash of brown, beige, and dun,
guarding a duckling? —yes, a wood duckling,

tiny crest of head beginning to green,
peeking out from behind the bird who warmed
a rogue egg enough to hatch it. But he hears

the slide whistle of his mother along
the canal and jumps from the limb to land
unharmed in the swale we have neglected

to trim. Even the dogs pause as he runs
to his kin. Only the owl now fills the space.
Feathering her hollow. Settling. Settling.

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Copyright © 2024 Jen Karetnick All rights reserved
from Inheritance with a High Error Rate
Cider Press Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission