Owl

There are bird skulls
in the tiles

& a death is watching me

from the tree outside—

two harvest moon eyes
staring into mine
& blowing them out

into burnt sockets.

The dark is heavy as wool—

turned up to the necks
of all the hanged men
who didn’t listen to

the warnings in the sky.

For three nights
a hooting has
shattered my ears

& ruffled my feathers—

there is no escape
from ancestral growth,

each leaf falls silently
as a wasted life.