Branch out leafs stuck in tables
The call of the wild
Inner child alive
Bust lose wild horses hate their stables

Some birds don't fly?
Chicken with head cut off can dance
Do all 16 dances
Can't fly to France

Or live in a tree full of owls

Crows nest
Birds and the bees
Eat from flowers
Just like all the rest

Reincarnation, a dead man takes a vacation
When I die I want to return as a wise owl
Live with a girl owl

In a tree full of owls...



Davey of Montana

It's within the grown out roots
where the Garden Owl still hoots
Sings the melancholy song
Of how the blue eyed girl was wrong.

It's within the thatching of the dwelling
And a failed attempt at fortune telling.
Beyond the garden of the bugs
Beyond the magpies and the slugs

A moon was folded into quarters
Grind it with pestle and mortar
Strip it down to crater powder
Feel it till the song sounds louder

The Garden Owl sings his song
Of how the blue eyed girl was wrong
And under the brown thatched roof
The girl detests her blue eyed youth

In the moonlight, high in the Lemon Gum,
perched under the arching ghostly branches
two eyes of jet peer from a snow-white mask.
Tyto Alba, the Barn Owl, with heart shaped
****** disc, edged with ruff of stiff feathers.
Mottled pearl-grey body feathers above
the moth like plumage, purest white beneath
her slim legs are bare on the lower half,
with small feet that end with deadly talons.

Nocturnal, she roosts in the heat of day.
You will hear her screeching in the cold night
hear the scream before you ever see her.
She can see in the half light of humans
night vision even in total darkness
pinpoints her prey by listening to each sound
the desperate, scuttling little creatures make.

She is a well designed killing machine
with hooked beak, powerful feet and sharp claws.
Her flight feathers have softened edges
to make her deadly flight near soundless
She swoops silently down without warning
seizing victims with her claws, biting deep
into their neck arteries, puncturing
their most precious organs for a quick death.

He thought that he had been evicted like a raucous Irishman, late once again on the rent, his belongings and furniture strewn on the lawn
His cold, deadly stare and ruffled red, said the same, with haughty indignation written all over him
As could be expected with any eviction, belongings strewn to the street, it started to rain; large splattering drops falling from the sky with an audible impact, adding insult to the injury
But he was just a child, set free and off to learn on his own, his perch and roost along with his chair, moved to his new home
He had outgrown the large screen porch, which was such a ridiculous place for an Owl anyway
Wood and glen gone, surrounded by girder and screen, locked into the realm of old peoples coffee and cigarettes
Tucked up into the eaves ignominiously, or sitting on the lamp, grooming flesh from his over large and taloned  feet
He would sit silhouetted by the dim red glow of the bulb, relaxing, until a noise would spin his head and he would become hooded and glaring death
The lamp added a glow to his eyes, which already burned with a raptors fire and he would become the personification of evil to the world of prey
Low and crouched, wings slightly spread; he would become the terrifying story that small warm animals tell their children at night to keep them in line and safe
But now he has been moved outside and all of his familiar belongings with him, or most anyways
Now he perches outside, either on the rough, twisted branches near his roost, or his favorite chair, and contemplates late into the night
But it seems that he prefers the comfort of his living room and he rests on the arm of the chair, quiet and pensive in the still and humid darkness
He stares at me while I smoke; the white plumes drifting like iridescent fog into the moonlight, while I observe him from his former home, illuminated by the dim lamp light
His saffron eyes gleam in the darkness, his dark form robed in that of the raptor, wings held down, with the tips outstretched like fingers
He stares at the lamp, standing like a pedestal against the wall and I wonder to myself
Does he want his ****** lamp moved out there too?

Do you want
to hear
a story droll?
About a dog
with a kind
soul

Outside,
that night,
I heard the winds howl
Inside
was the sound
of an intermittent growl

I opened the door and he
slipped out
Some time later, he
came back with a pout

Reprimanded he was
for coming back
with a muddy taint.
Remorseless,
head raised, he
stood there defiant.

“Okay, Scot!
Let’s see what you got”

He gently
dropped
his big scowl
and Out fell,
in my palms,
a baby owl!

Apparently he had
peeped far
from his tree hole
When Scot was
beneath that tree
sniffing a mole

Frightened but fine,
the owlet
was a bit choosy
So we went,
to put him back,
in his tree hole cosy!