Wings

a flock of owls followed me
out of my childhood
last night almost caught me
with their cruel blunt beaks
and crueler loneliness
came out of  the trees
like sheets of paper torn
from a dismembered diary
burned  me down to the knees 
with their yellowed stare.
words are not enough to describe
how it feels to be driven 
out of shape, into prey
nothing but the battered
heartbeat for company
back hunched from a 40 year
cringe & ahead the empty
house in a dead orchard 
the house I will die alone in
a mattress waits linened
in the broken glass 
of a hundred windows through
which the breeze sweeps
in the soundless wings.