Barn Owl – A Poem by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

She said
she was a barn owl
in a past life.

Pointed to her love
of barns,

those great eyes
she’d been blessed with
since birth.

I laughed
and told her
I could still remember
my days as the bus
to work.

Why did she think
I was never on
time?

That’s just how it was.
How it was for the bus to work,
which meant how it was
for me now.

I could see
she felt cheated.

That I felt a lot better
about living with a barn owl
than she did shacking up

with the bus
to work.