oh sister owl
with your feathered throat
with your golden mouth
in your silent coat

you cut our skin
till our blood runs white
our lantern hearts
shed all their light

we see the past
the birth of stars
but endless space
is never ours

moonlight fills us
bright with pain
we burst out forth
like falling rain

oh sister owl
cough up our minds
our pulverised bones
are ground quite fine

we see the future
the death of stars
but empty space
is never ours

no sunlight fills us
bright as leaves
we glitter not
entice not thieves

oh sister owl
our souls are mulch
we stain the earth
and the sky as much

the sky is red
with our demise
its promise nothing
its promise lies

daytime, night-time
the skies are false
the stars long dead
in their destined course

homeless of shadows
and such and such
we await your judgement
we await your touch

oh sister owl
with your feathered throat
with your golden mouth
in your silent coat

you cut our skin
till our blood runs white
our lantern hearts
shed all their light

our lantern hearts
shed all their light

[John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is a Muse pagan. His fifth poetry collection, The Offspring of the Moon, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. His poems are widely published and some have appeared in Dreams & Nightmares, Eye to the Telescope, Grievous Angel, The Pedestal Magazine, Rose Red Review, Star*Line, and Strange Horizons.]