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Lance Lee

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What God does with Owls

Have you seen an owl die? Or
are they the true immortals, feeding
on the carelessness of others?
Maybe their bodies incandesce
at the moment of death
like a camera’s white flash...

Does God give them then a place
on the tree of life, in heaven, never
to hunt the small shapes at its base?
Or does He put them in
some dark corner of His mind
where every hunt succeeds,

meat a hot, perfect red,
nights full of small scurryings,
thuds, sudden cut-off screams?
And does He who is everywhere
loose Himself through the air
in them too, talons out-stretched,

deal the deadly blow, tear a cry
with his yellow beak, stretch out
his head to let warm flesh slide
down his maw, enthralled
while a heart still beats in His claws?
What does He do with owls?

Surely not condemn them for doing
what He made them for?
I think they are closer to His heart
than us, like all wild things, because
they are perfect in their wills,
in their griefs, their pleasures -

not cross-grained with defiance
like ourselves, careworn, at a loss
to make sense of Him, of our lives.
It it us He puts in some dark corner
so we cannot infect these others
with our wear, and doubt, and wonder.

 

Page(s) 57

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