Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (Great Horned Owl with Harvest Moon)

The owl who wears the moon like a halo

considers himself saintly, and indeed,

compared with many he’s an upstanding fellow,

if something of a voyeur. Not the seedy

kind, you understand – he merely savours

the healthy stare; likes to know what folk

get up to when we think we’re under cover,

blind to the bird on the branch, eyes like egg yolks.

‘When not glutting your relish for scandal,’ he exclaims,

‘you’re drunk on, and drowning in, a tidal wave of farce.’

‘True,’ I reply, ‘there’s plenty to make us ashamed,

but virtue’s a cinch when you’re stuck behind glass.’

He says nothing to this, though his halo glows brighter

and his toes grip the perch just a little bit tighter.

Art by Joseph Cornell

Poem by Benjamin Palmer

This poem was first published in the New Welsh Review