The Great Horned Night Owl
screeches my name and
I whisper back that it’s wrong.
Look around the block, across the coast
there is the soul that you seek.
She shifts to the closest oak limb
tapping just outside my window.
Bruja Buho both witch and owl
my grandmother called her,
this white night tapper
defiantly staring into my soul.
I listen to her caw, trying to detect
the trapped echo of others inside
but hear only my own.
It ruffles its plumicorns
reasserting its power over me
even in the past blinding light.
Its fluting has always
followed silently behind.
The final shape of this shifter
has always been me,
its imitations always my song.
She takes flight and
stands in the sky
denying me heaven.
She commands my ghost
to roam the earth forever,
my fate to be a
warning to my children.
She denies them her guardianship.
She denies them her wisdom.
She curses their sleep
to nightmares.
They will only know
her banshee screeching.
Her appearance will be
their disease and punishment.
In the bony circles around her eyes
they will see my torment
and my mimed warnings.
And when they kill her,
denying their fate,
they will see the sky again and
wear her feathers in their hair.
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