Call and Response

The owls are singing a duet:
Low hoot, soft call.
You listen from the doorway,
one hand on the cold knob.
Low hoot; soft call.
Full moon,
tree shadows on snow.

"Last fall," you said today
—but meant the fall before,
when you were about to
(if all had gone as planned
—and even your backup plan
didn't include a pandemic—

Low hoot, soft call.
Low hoot

This is the second winter:
if you squint hard you can see
a year there, weeks and months
like bars of frozen shadow.
Lies, deaths. Killings, protests.
The garden, the dishes.

Low hoot
Icy air around your ankles.
Low hoot

You feel the tired
parenthesis waiting to close,
but whatever you were saying
is buried under the days. The aside
has become the sentence.
There is no punctuation for that.

Low hoot
The house is getting cold.
You shut the door.