What was that haunting sound
outside in the gathering gloom?
Its mournful tones rang round
the pale moonlit silent  room.
No spectre, ghost nor ghoul,
but only a wandering owl
that had lately left its lair
to sit high in an oak tree bare
of leaves. While from nearby,
feathers unruffled wide of eye,
it cast a shadow from its head,
as I lay only half-asleep in bed.
Counting each and every breath.
Its presence “a harbinger of death”
often in fables told and legendary.
Was there an omen in its elegy?
For this listener, blanketed prone
in fearful darkness, still as stone.

TOBIAS