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  • Barn Owl for Owl as promised
      • 7milebeach
      Posted Feb 13, 2005 9:56 AM

      Barn Owl by Gwen Harwood

      Daybreak: the house slept.
      I rose, blessed by the sun
      A horny fiend, I crept out with my father's gun.
      Let him dream of a child, obedient, angel mind -

      old No-Sayer, robbed of power by sleep.
      I knew my prize who swooped home at this hour with daylight-riddled eyes to his place on a high beam in our old stables, to dream

      light's useless time away.
      I stood, holding my breath, in urine-scented hay, master of life and death, a wisp-haired judgement whose law would punish beak and claw.

      My first shot struck, He swayed, ruined, beating his only wing, as I watched, afraid by the fallen gun, a lonely child who believed death clean and final, not this obscene
      tangle of stuff that dropped, and dribbled through loose straw blindly closer.
      I saw those eyes that did not see mirror my cruelty

      while the wretched thing that could not bear the light nor hide hobbled in its own blood.
      My father reached my side,
      gave me the fallen gun
      "End what you have begun".

      I fired. The blank eyes shone
      once into mine, and slept.
      I leaned my head upon my father's arm, and wept,
      owl-blind in early sun
      for what I had begun.
      ======================================================
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