PERSON Poem: Three Owls, by Benjamin Marrow

On lonely summer evenings
when she cannot stand to be
there are three owls who watch my
mother from high up in a tree.

Three small owls like gray thumbs
perched, eyes round as silver plates
they hold until the light is gone
and watch her smoking cigarettes.

Three beings gazing far into the dark
as though prepared to swoop and dive
to hunt the spreading bruise of grass
and then return into the sky.

Suppose they know that she is tired
of sleeping sick throughout the day
they know she locks the bedroom door
and will not listen to her name.

Her pale athenaic statuettes
of bodied smoke and hidden leaves
sit mute and solomonic
almost too still to believe.

Three small owls watching her
depressed headaches, her spirit hands
that rise to catch her falling face
as softly as the locusts land.