John Biscello

Owl, owl, burning white,

your gaze, peerless,

and sublime,

bearing braised volumes

of silence

within fathomless archives–

Who dares to confront

the suddenness of history,

all at once, unblinking?

Who dares to initiate the sorrow

of millennia, in a single

unremitting glance?

Mortals, short in flight

and memory,

cannot hold a candle

to your ennobled singe.