Tawny Owls
I’ll take your owl, Paul, and Sylvia’s
and raise you two, that call
across the meadow on August nights;
male and female: one twit,
the other twoo. I won’t say
which is which.
No, I haven’t seen them,
haven’t risked my bald pate,
don’t believe they’d make
that kind of miscalculation.
I just know they want to keep
in touch, over the sleeping poppies.
Simon Williams has been writing since his teens, when he was mentored at university by Roger McGough. He has nine collections, the latest being The Magpie Almanack (www.simonwilliams.info), from Vole, published December 2020. Simon was elected The Bard of Exeter in 2013, founded the large-format magazine, The Broadsheet and published the PLAY anthology in 2018.