An Omen
On nights like these when coal fires burn,
tainting with soot city\'s grey air,
I hear the owl from my easy chair
and imagine talons sheathed in thick fur.
No distance his haunts as nearby screams
mean hunger-hunts in crumbling walls
where once stood candelabra-lit halls
full of silk-shod dancers under oak beams.
Like hooded omen he downward swoops,
alights with predator\'s wide-eye stare
then plucks another rat that unwarily
stops to wipe whiskers in roofless rooms.
Old castles doomed to collapse will house
after time\'s passage only the hooting owls.