Charlotte Innes: “Owls”
OWLS
My bathroom door crashed against the bathroom wall last night,
the top hinge pulling away from a rotting door frame.
Another item to add to my list of much-needed fixes,
two chests, each with a broken leg, a drawer with collapsing runner.
And I know if it rains, the outside-facing bedroom wall
will leak again.
Across the street, two butterflies, cabbage whites, I think,
flicker slowly across my neighbor’s lavender—trimmed
so hard each week, their flowers barely grow. The yard’s a green
monotone. How I long for the straggle of red geraniums
that flourished there, before the house was reconstructed,
inside and out.
The street has changed. Where are the lizards that used to bake in the sun
on cracked sidewalks? The raccoons? The neighborhood owl,
whose gentle hooting helped me sleep? My screensaver’s now
a silent sequence of snowy owls who float hypnotically
over my laptop screen. Purest white. Four-foot wings.
Wide yellow eyes.
Charlotte Innes is the author of a chapbook, Twenty Pandemicals (Kelsay Books, 2021), and Descanso Drive, a full-length book of poems (Kelsay Books, 2017). Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Hudson Review, Rattle, Sewanee Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and several anthologies, including The Best American Spiritual Writing for 2006 (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). A former newspaper reporter, freelance writer and teacher, she has written on books and the arts for many publications, including The Nation and the Los Angeles Times.