Wood Awakening

By Charlotte Blair

Nothing wakens faster than a drowsy dog

sussing, through an open window, the stabbing screams

of an animal, took my mind time to assign the sound

to a rabbit, and the way it swung, far and near

from the forest to the burnt August lawn

told me its breath was in the grip of an owl.

On a gentle evening, we can hear the orotund owl

when out to do business with that bed-bound dog

who pounces, here and there, at young toads on the lawn

it’s a different scene than those midnight screams

that broke through our window, dreadfully near

and found me googling such an unnerving sound.

It stretches the poet’s mind, describing a secret sound

to an iPhone, but it’s how we first learned that this owl

was a barred owl living seductively near

our quiet forest house, policed by black cat and dog

that explodes from sleep to rigid at the first slices of screams

of that unfortunate cottontail snatched from our lawn.

Pup and I do a lot of things on our parched lawn

sometimes I lose her attention to the sound

of neighbour dog’s walking, and children’s wild screams

as they play in the forest, maybe passing under an owl

they can’t see in the shade, an owl watching the dog

training through tunnels and jumps, sometimes too near.

I wonder if the dear rabbit’s remains are near

wilting in the woods that wall our lawn

waiting, while it rots, to whistle in my dog           

who, I’m sure, would wolf it without a sound

canine feasting on crumbs left by our cruel owl               

I doubt she’ll remember her snack’s dying screams.

Anxious tonight’s dreams will recall the screams

that rattled last night, so disturbingly near

not a coyote or wolf, I’m sure it was an owl

because of how quickly the squeals moved over the lawn

closer and further, higher and lower the sound                             

coincident to the quivering muscles of my diligent dog.              

Leave it to the stony owl to cause such ghastly screams

on such an unsettled night, grateful the dog is near

and our dried-up lawn swallows the shuddersome sound.

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Charlotte Blair is at peace when surrounded by fresh poems, boisterous dogs, grooving blues and rebellious friends. She has seen a number of successes with her writing, most notably winning The Ontario Poetry Society’s Ted Plantos Memorial Award 2025. Poetry is like math for Charlotte; she loves the feeling she gets when the perfect word completes the equation and things are suddenly absolutely right. Charlotte writes about sexual abuse, death, escapism, madness and dogs. While she most often writes to form, she has been known to break out into free verse now and then.