The Owl
       

The four candles took a while to burn down
but they did, leaving the boy's corpse in the dark,
apart from a blue light filched from the hospital
that wouldn't have lit a weasel's way home.

The boy's father was on top of the water-tower
with a whisky-bottle. His mother was a kilometre
out into the Mediterranean under the moon
and was finally, finally, thinking of turning back.

Only the boy's sister was in the house with him
and she was sleepwalking up the steep stairs
to stand at his feet and shout out in her sleep
the old song he'd loved so much about the owls.

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Copyright © 2018 Matthew Sweeney All rights reserved
from My Life as a Painter
Bloodaxe Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission