Owls

Have you seen the owls –
the wooden blue ones –
that hang up with the branches of the trees,
in the Cistern, hidden away, like real owls?

I think they were hung there
for the people like me
who come to the Cistern looking for something,
and we find it in the serenity of its beauty.

I laid in the bright green grass –
 have you ever looked at Randolf Hall
from the angle of laying down right in front of it?
It makes it look a lot bigger and more historic.

I look at those curving stairways
and I’m taken back to the early 1700’s.
I imagine a sepia image of students climbing
up those stairs to become a lawyer or doctor.
All men.

 I wonder when the owls were hung.
What if they were not hung at all,
and rather, they are real owls that are like me
and they love the Cistern too much to leave?

One day I will walk over
this thing we all call the cistern.
I will receive a big piece of paper telling me
that I am now free to leave and go get a job.

 But maybe I won’t go.
I might climb up those steps,
but not walk over the Cistern at all.
Instead, I will fly up into the trees and perch myself
in the branches, with my family, the owls.