The Owl

Come morning he hoots  
and no one understands:

A Rolls Royce helicopter  
makes mandalas upon the waves. 
A congress of octopi  
lets the hurricane move in.  
Can I sleep in your basement tonight?

A marginal figure.  
Existing by chance  
in destitution 
or very structured homes. 
Migratory  jobs are the norm.  
Average enough  to pass for riffraff 
his commune with ghosts 
is soon detected by psychiatrists  
who abandon him, untreatable 
resistant, perhaps unrecoverable 
perhaps just ok.

Such a woman driving home 
tries not to hit a homeless woman 
knowing she could be dodging traffic next--
accused of child neglect 
burnt at the stake. Drugs take her sometimes. 
Sometimes she takes herself. 
It wasn’t always this way. 
It won’t always be again.

The owl sleeps with many thoughts  
including yours.
Its dreams are all of daylight
and nights an unfettered flight
to a site where the wind 
lets voices good and disturbed
from one world into this one.