Xanadu and the Owl That Stole a Shadow

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Some poems begin as love poems and then refuse to stay in the room.

“Xanadu” started with Geoff and me. One or two people will know why I titled it "Xanadu." It began with the funny, tender mismatch of how bodies and spirits age at different speeds. I look young, but I feel old. He feels young, but looks old. That little exchange felt domestic at first, even playful. Then the poem opened a side door.

In walked an owl. Then mice. Then a snake’s shadow. Then a volcano.

That is one of the strange pleasures of writing a poem every day. The poem may begin with the person sitting beside you, or the memory of a conversation, or the shape your back makes when you are tired. Then something wild enters and changes the weather.

The poem begins at home, then moves into the woods.

Today’s poem is Xanadu

Here is the poem.

Xanadu Katerina Canyon I look young, but I feel old. He feels young but looks old. That’s how we match. The owl minds the mice dancing in the dust while the earth splits between the trees. We are satiated and settled. The owl swoops down to steal the snake’s shadow. It is gone. Just like that. Like steam escaping from the cracks of a volcano. We no longer stand tall. I’m an “S.” He’s a question mark. The owl is fed. The mice are hiding. The trees still stand.

The strange honesty of aging beside someone

The opening of this poem is plain on purpose.

I look young, but I feel old. He feels young but looks old.

There is no ornament there. No attempt to make aging prettier than it is. I wanted the lines to move like speech, the way two people might describe themselves while getting ready for bed, or passing each other in the hallway, or laughing at a mirror that has been rude again.

The match between the two speakers is not romantic in the usual polished way. It is not about grand promises. It is about a shared imbalance.

One person carries age inside. One person carries it outside. Together, they make a kind of symmetry.

That felt true to me. Relationships are often built on these uneven trades. One person remembers the appointment. The other remembers the song. One person worries early. The other worries late. One person feels older than they look. The other looks older than they feel.

That’s how we match.

The line is simple, but it carries the whole first movement of the poem. It accepts the mismatch. It does not try to correct it.

Then the owl arrives

Once the owl appears, the poem leaves ordinary domestic space.

The owl is not described as beautiful or wise. It is watching. It “minds the mice,” which gives it a strange authority. The mice are not simply prey at first. They are dancing in the dust. That image has motion in it, but also dryness. It feels like a small ceremony happening close to the ground.

Then the earth splits.

That is the first real rupture in the poem. The speaker and Geoff may be satiated and settled, but the world around them is not stable. Something has cracked between the trees.

I like that tension. The poem says one thing and shows another. The people are settled. The land is splitting. The mice dance. The owl watches. A snake is present, but only through its shadow.

The scene starts to feel like a fable, though it never explains its moral.

The earth in the poem is not still, even when the speakers are settled.

The snake’s shadow may be the real prey

The line that surprised me most was this one:

The owl swoops down to steal the snake’s shadow.

Not the snake. The shadow.

That matters.

A shadow is attached to a body, but it is not the body. It is evidence, echo, outline, omen. To steal the snake’s shadow is to steal something more symbolic than flesh. It is an attack on presence. It is a disappearance without blood.

The poem says:

It is gone. Just like that.

I like the bluntness of that sentence. It does not pause to mourn. It does not explain the rules of the world. One moment the shadow exists. The next moment it does not.

That kind of vanishing happens in life. Sometimes a fear leaves all at once. Sometimes a version of the self disappears. Sometimes certainty evaporates. Sometimes what is taken is not the danger itself, but the shape the danger made in the mind.

The next image makes that disappearance physical:

Like steam escaping from the cracks of a volcano.

Steam is visible only for a moment. It rises because of pressure underneath. That pressure is mostly hidden. The volcano suggests heat, danger, and old force beneath the surface.

So the poem’s world is not only wooded. It is volcanic. It has roots and magma. Dust and steam. Mice and shadows.

That is what I mean when I say the poem wandered.

It began with Geoff and me. Then it found a mythic animal logic and followed it.

Bodies turn into punctuation

The ending brings the poem back to the two people, but it does not return them to where they began.

We no longer stand tall. I’m an “S.” He’s a question mark.

This may be my favorite little turn in the poem.

The bodies become punctuation. Not just bent bodies, but signs. The speaker curves into an “S.” Geoff becomes a question mark.

An “S” can be a spine. It can be a snake. It can be softness, slippage, or survival. A question mark holds uncertainty in its posture. It bends and asks. It does not stand like an answer.

Together, those shapes also return us to the snake and its shadow. The speaker’s “S” echoes the snake. Geoff’s question mark echoes the unknown. The bodies have absorbed the poem’s wildness.

Aging does that too. It turns us into symbols we did not choose. A shoulder dips. A back curves. A face changes. A body begins to ask questions in public.

Still, the poem does not end with collapse.

The bodies in the poem bend into signs, but they do not disappear.

The trees still stand

The last three lines settle the poem into a hard calm.

The owl is fed. The mice are hiding. The trees still stand.

Everyone has adjusted to the event.

The owl has eaten. The mice have retreated. The trees remain upright. The world has not ended, even though something vanished. That feels true in a way that is not exactly comforting, but is steadier than despair.

The poem does not say the speakers stand. Earlier, it says they no longer do. But the trees do.

That difference matters. The natural world holds a kind of vertical patience the human body cannot keep forever. We bend. We curl. We become letters and questions. The trees keep their columned silence.

I do not read that as defeat. I read it as placement. The poem knows the scale of things. The self changes. Love changes. A shadow can be stolen. Dust can rise. Steam can escape. But something remains standing nearby.

Not everything has to be saved for the poem to feel complete.

A note on Batik and what comes next

Today I learned about Batik, so do not be surprised if cloth, wax, dye, and pattern appear soon.

Batik feels like it belongs near poetry. The process asks for patience. Wax protects part of the fabric. Dye enters what is left open. Then the maker repeats the process, building pattern through both coverage and exposure.

That sounds like writing to me.

A poem also hides and reveals. It stains one part of the page while leaving another part untouched. It lets meaning seep in unevenly. Sometimes the blank space matters as much as the mark.

I did not write the Batik poem tonight because it is after my bedtime, and I can feel the edges of the day getting blurry. Some subjects need more attention than a tired mind can give them. Batik deserves a little wakefulness.

Still, I can feel it waiting. Maybe the next poem will carry color instead of dust. Maybe it will trade the owl for wax. Maybe it will still keep a shadow somewhere in the folds.

Batik may be the next poem’s doorway.

Why I’m keeping this one short

I could keep circling this poem. I could ask why the owl steals a shadow instead of a mouse, why the snake is almost absent, why the trees are the only ones that still stand.

But some poems do not want to be pinned down the same day they arrive.

Tonight, I am letting “Xanadu” remain a little odd. It can keep its woods, its cracked earth, its fed owl, and its hiding mice. It can keep the private beginning that started with Geoff and me, and the stranger ending that belongs to whatever part of the mind speaks in animals.

If you are following along with the Tupelo effort, please donate to Tupelo if you can. Poetry communities survive because people keep showing up, reading, giving, and making room for the next voice.

For tonight, that is enough: the poem is written, the owl is fed, and the trees still stand.