Dear, Strange Friend

I stole a picture of you as a child, 

holding a feather

from the little owl your mother found fallen in the barn,

she brought him to you, with his wings held at his sides, 

a balled fist of feathers, wrapped in her cardigan. 

You called him Ollie, fed him dead chicks from the coop,

the ones whose rosebud hearts couldn’t bloom – 

you didn’t cry but you stroked their little yellow chests

and thanked them for helping your killer friend – 

butter soft, they turned to fat beneath his skin. He grew, 

so did you. You imagined his heart as your father’s thumb, 

black with oil, sparking a lighter to a beat. 

You tied Ollie to your bedpost with a length of baling twine, 

your own demon drawing kisses on your cheeks with his claws,

until he grew strong enough to leave you

as all things must, it seems. He flew in the autumn,

on the out-breath of the summer, as the cow parsley

dropped seeds with a sigh, you learnt to say goodbye

and held tighter on the lesson as you began to need it, 

the fist of your heart gathering rings for remembrance,

reeling it in, two handed, from the wild air.