I Just Shot An Owl

I Just Shot An Owl

written by: Joseph Kachiliko

@JosephKachiliko

 

I just shot an owl,
Don’t ask me how,
Or why an act so foul
‘Twas for my senses to dull.

He was up in a tree, my prey.
A horrid looking bird up there.
And suddenly my heart leapt in the most morbid way.
With nothing but murder to bring content.

A flaw in nature’s beauty
Mustn’t roam the earth, thought I
Lest the beautiful take offence.
Yet there perched one such creature,
And I without pity meant to dispose

Plop, plop, plop beat my heart,
In that one moment our eyes met,
Mine behind the spy glass, and his before the barrel
Of the cold unpitying marshal, that held his fate in scales
Each discerning the emptiness of our worlds.

In a moment our loathes exposed,
Mine of a world with obvious ugliness,
And his of ugliness masked in beauty,
Yet none wanting to be wrong

My world must triumph said I,
A pound of flesh to ugliness,
– And woe to the poignant and horrid of the creatures,
Reeled my heart in favor, in the cold caress of my gun.

POW! I heard a splinter fly, POW! From the mechanic bosom of my gun,
Was my job o’er? Was it done?
Stooping forth I probed, disposed of gun from my cheeks.
And woe a revelation!

What did I just do?
My insides turned to prod,
Irked by the warmth coursing to my cheeks
A heart was returning in me, and fear struck within me.

Did I just take a life?
A pulse was fading in the bushes,
A life was waning in the bushes
Yanking at the heart of its murderous foe.

I just shot an owl, for no reason but I could.
I must be a horrid living creature, now.
The most horrible of them all.

 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

An analogy of the destruction mankind causes on those he preys.