Owl
Owl - meaning Summary
Predatory Calm in Suburbia
A midnight owl intrudes on a suburban main street, entering a scene of staged affluence: shop windows display wedding cakes, diamond rings, and wax mannequins. The bird’s powerful wings and eerie cry puncture the artificial calm, suggesting wild predation beneath polished surfaces. The poem contrasts human display and control with untamed nature’s appetite, ending with an image of the city shaken by the owl’s cry and the implied violence of rats’ teeth.
Read Complete AnalysesClocks belled twelve. Main street showed otherwise Than its suburb of woods : nimbus--- Lit, but unpeopled, held its windows Of wedding pastries, Diamond rings, potted roses, fox-skins Ruddy on the wax mannequins In a glassed tableau of affluence. From deep-sunk basements What moved the pale, raptorial owl Then, to squall above the level Of streetlights and wires, its wall to wall Wingspread in control Of the ferrying currents, belly Dense-feathered, fearfully soft to Look upon? Rats' teeth gut the city Shaken by owl cry.
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