This month’s Versed in Florida is with poet Sidney Wade. She teaches English at the University of Florida. Her poems and translations of foreign language poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Poetry, The New Yorker, Grand Street, and The Paris Review. WADE's sixth collection of poems, Straits & Narrows, was published in 2013. Her Turkish poetry translations will be published in October. Lately she’s only been writing poems about birds, including this one about Burrowing Owls, she explained to WGCU’s Amy Tardif.
Burrowing Owl
Very odd,
this little cloud
in trousers
in the sandy
fortress
favored by
prairie dog
and gopher
tortoise.
On the mound
at the mouth-hole,
he scouts around
with sybilline
yellow eyes
and then, owl-
wise, decides
to clean house.
He dives down
and soon
great clouds
of smudge come
flying out,
his home now
clean as a bone.
A diurnal owl,
he’s upside-down
and inside-out,
at ease
not in trees,
but underground,
where his mate
broods
on her eight
fragile moons
in an immaculate
burrow whose
contours are lined
with cow manure.