Owl Moon with Audio

Posted on by
Owl Moon by Kerfe Roig

Full and bright, the night alight
with skittering scatters and chitter-chat
of sated rat. The vixen barks to her mate,
and beneath the walls, creatures slither and crawl,
while mice and voles in the shadows hide
as feathered wings outstretched glide–and bide.

And shall I call it owl moon?
A moment in time, perhaps not real—
Imagined flights, unseen sights, but
the planets spin, the stars glow and go
about what they do, and the owl does, too,
with a hoot to the world, he dives,
survives—though it’s fate—not feud,
the hunters and the pursued.

All the questions, unanswered, still are asked—
the moments gone, past to future and to past–

but listen–
the fade of argent song, the hummed goodnight,
as trills and twitters awaken dawn’s light.

This was originally written for Paul Brookes’ Special January Ekphrastic Challenge. Kerfe Roig supplied the beautiful artwork. I’ve added this recording of the poem to go with it, and I’m linking it to dVerse Open Link Night.

77 thoughts on “Owl Moon with Audio”

  5. A perfect Halloween poetic. Owls are fearsome night flight predators. Your details and flowing rhyme scheme holds our attention. Your audio was great, and it was a gift to hear it; nice work.

  7. Perfect timing for this weekend…I would have loved the poem in any month though. We have owls in our back woods. I like to listen to them…something so wonderful about owls. 🙂

    • That’s so cool. I don’t hear owls very often. One night in the fall before my mom died, we were in the ER with her, and when we got home late at night, there was an owl hooting. And it went on for a long time.

  9. Loved hearing you read this marvelous moody vision of the power of the night and its creatures, foreboding and inexorable. And then the dawn with its “argent song”! Richly wrought imagery, Merrill.
    pax,
    dora

  22. You bring the dark night and mood of All Hallows to life here. Great visuals and description. I especially like your transition here: “…All the questions, unanswered, still are asked—/the moments gone, past to future and to past–” it ties all the sights, sounds and movements in the previous stanzas together and then whisks us into morning. Enjoyed it!

  27. Enchanting, Merril.
    I listened to you reading.
    Your voice is clear, yet not overstated.
    Perfect.
    Perhaps Jeremy Irons is the only person who could read this better than you do.

      • Yes, I don’t want to go out in the dark-dark, so I’ve been waiting till about 6:45, and it’s still twilight then. We go back to standard time on Sunday though, so I’m going to be totally thrown off for a couple weeks.

      • I have no choice, especially on Mondays (I have an 8 am appointment) to go earlier. I have to calculate stretch and shower time in there! Mind you, when I walk, it’s less exigent. I can skip the stretch and can have a quickie shower 😉
        We also go back to standard time at the same time as you 🙂 Gah! I wish they would abolish this foolishness.

      • I agree about the time shifts.
        My husband got sprayed by a skunk a few weeks ago, and saw a possum in our yard a couple nights ago, so I’m sort of afraid what I might encounter. Plus I need a white hoody, I think.

      • Useless things.
        Oh no! Poor Doug! I don’t blame you on being afraid of what you can encounter. And guess what I was wearing this morning? Yessiree… a white hoody 😉

      • Oh yes. Or get a reflective stripe put on it. I am always careful to wear either that or my light grey jacket. I fear wearing anything darker.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.