To see an owl in the day, wisdom must come

Abstract

To see an owl in the day, wisdom must come Anne Casey (bio) Over the heads of babypink camellia flowers,I heard an owl hootingover and overin broad daylight:wondered what it meant, the morning after full of groans—long, slow, constant, gut-wrenching—a giant steel claw scraping rawrock since dawn across the gullywhere just weeks agoa cluster of gumtreespaid homage toswarmingrainclouds, the hollowed socketof a rhino skulleyeing mefrom the bathroom floor,an emaciated vulturecircling above—shiveringshower-water, I sawmy footprints haderased themboth— even the electrical socketsare ghostingexistentialscreams,headlines screeching,the cloud fullof warning [End Page 262] beyond ourwatchful treesas sundownshrinksinto a thin red linebefore darknessswallows it whole: our kind, always goodat reading omensin shadows—so much betterat ignoring themnow. [End Page 263] Anne Casey Anne Casey is an Irish-Australian poet and writer living in Sydney. She is the author of four books of poetry, and her work ranks in The Irish Times' "Most Read." A journalist, magazine editor, legal author, and media communications director for thirty years, she is widely published and awarded internationally, most recently as winner of the American Writers Review Competition 2021. She is the recipient of an Australian Government Scholarship for her PhD in creative writing at the University of Technology Sydney. anne-casey.com, @1annecasey. Copyright © 2022 Wayne State University Press