I am going start the series with a post about a subject dear to my heart - owls. When I was nearly three, my family moved house. My father took me exploring the garden, an event that has stayed with me to this day. The previous owner had kept owls in the old stables that sat at the bottom of the garden of our rather normal terraced house and Dad showed me the pellets. The experience is the subject of the poem that gave my newly published poetry collection its title. The poem appears at the bottom of this post.
Ever since then I have had a love of owls and it seems that the Czechs have too, as owls feature in quite a few prints in the collection. Here are a few of my favourites:
First we found the snake
a ball of coiled skin and muscle
in a pickling jar at the base of the
hedge.
I followed my father up
the outside stair to the stable loft,
on one side the railway signal
without a track,
on the other a brick wall,
pocked as the moon,
that would crumble
like cheese in the rain
under the thud of my ball
and send it flying sideways
escaping me.
The tread creaked as my father
entered
and I followed into the dim.
I looked around, but saw
only an empty perching post.
The owl had gone with its master.
At my father’s instruction
I held out my hands
as if ready to receive bread and
wine,
but into my bowl of fingers
he dropped a pellet,
a galaxy of small bones and feathers
cocooned in fur.
That night I woke.
The moon shredded by clouds
hung over the stable roof
and an owl called unbound
from the cypress tree.
