LITTLE OWL WHO LIVES IN THE ORCHARD
            Mary Oliver
                p. 1990*
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His beak could open a bottle,
and his eyes--when he lifts their soft lids--
go on reading something
just beyond your shoulder--
Blake, maybe, 
or the Book of Revelation.

Never mind that he eats only 
the black-smocked crickets, 
and the dragonflies if they happen
to be out late over the ponds, and of course
the occasional festal mouse.
Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear--

it's not size but surge that tells us
when we're in touch with something real, 
and when I hear him in the orchard
fluttering
down the little aluminum
ladder of his scream--
when I see his wings open, like two black ferns,

a flurry of palpitations
as cold as sleet
rackets across the marshlands
of my heart,
like a wild spring day.

Somewhere in the universe, 
in the gallery of important things, 
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish, 
sits on its pedestal.
Dear, dark dapple of plush! 
A message, reads the label, 
from that mysterious conglomerate: 
_Oblivion_and_Co._
The hooked head stares
from its blouse of dark, feathery lace.
It could be a valentine.


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* from _House_of_Light_, 1990
(--Note: the original poem is center-justified.)

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