I Heard the Owl Call My Name

I heard the owl call my name, like a backbeat in a child's voice, etched in shadows of a father's grave, lonely echoes on a frosted night... at dawn I'll be immortal again, renewed by a workaday and the frigid fiscal year, my soul stays leafless in damp moonlight... do we end days defibrillating in hospice and parchment or under foreign suns twitching and fluid, while kestrels dive as doves take flight... why only in the dark hours, the soul's midnight, can we see farther, deeper, nightdreams wander like a restless wight... experienced or just imagined, dreamt but never realized, conceived yet unexecuted, an inner eye begs keener sight... as yellow eyed and dark skinned children, play with tattered banners, laughing at rusted armor, bleaching bones, and history cries that might makes right... as I, stale pilgrim of no progress, catch faint odors of war, in the molded root cellar of my mind, as hope catches wind like a child's kite.