Tony Whooley
Photograph: Picasso and owl
The eyes prick fiercely out.
The head at a cockeyed tilt
beaks forward, quizzing
into the glare. The body,
tiny, folded to a shuttlecock
of neat feathers, sits awkward -
a prop palmed off in the gesture
of his outstretched hand.
For all the studio artifice,
only he could upstage an owl,
stare with owl-round predatory
eyes scanning an inner
landscape of his own - an abstract
hunger of cubes and shadows
watching, listening like trees
in the swivel dark.
A filament in the brain explodes.
Vision swoops. Wings
whistling the hooded air
beat steady over ancient floors.
The waited moment holds
its breath like trapped fear,
tense for release, a bolt
of the feathered lightning earthed.
Talons grip, quick
at the scuffled kill, nail
a cry to the terrified bone.
A drawn instinct claws
the blooding image
to scissored meat, daubs
the gashed canvas to its
final mask,
more real,
more owl.
Page(s) 55
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