What remains of this music

Owls That Sit The Oaks

We place the moon to our mouths, the three
of us, and flute the hoots that cradle the darkness
from cratered limbs we use to do such things.

Mine are common, given to lose more than they
carry, comfort not the issue one imagines it to be.
Theirs lift them above all the night takes hostage.

Able to kill color with their eyes, they skirt
the dragged hems of rising worlds like they
were born to it. We thread a horned threnody,

the three of us, beginning with the double-basso
oak silhouetted black against the village below,
then the contralto across the field afar who waits

her scriptless turn to croon the echo, followed by
the sotto voce of a curled tongue that sets turrets
to pivot in feathered swivels as they look toward



the dark house and the darker figure on the darkened
deck to wonder what wings might carry a figure of
such grim misshapenness and then it’s again time

to repeat the first note of the triad and we do this for
twenty minutes because one is not often asked to sit-in
with hunters of prey, make talon music with night rakers

who allow this until somewhere something skitters
through just enough to seize the motif, modulate key
and insert some vital element of curious percussion,

carry aria to their unbarned arms that take leave of
branching themes so far stated as the moon carries
what remains of this music deeper into night where

the unvoiced things of this world remain to consider for
a time briefer than there is time to consider these things
that such musics exist to make of silence a perfect note.

Joseph Gallo
January 18, 2009