How to catch a laughing owl

In a midden lie the remains of bats,

once flushed from darkness, snatched

against blackened starlight 

under the wing-hush of a laughing owl;

a shadow of a previous existence.

When one flyer is taken by another,

the moon-bright face of one, round,

eye-full, drinking the night's marrow 

in dismal glances - it will not be 

the owl who is caught. 

The last bone-shrieks were lonely,

calls unanswered except perhaps by cat

or stoat, too strange and too late 

to adapt a pattern of behaviour, 

and would we, if we could, turn back,

reverse even our unintentional sins,

and at our play of might-have-beens 

what history should we modify,

before extinction quietened and

we wonder what it is that now fills

each particular silence. 
 

Image of a laughing owl (extinct for about 100 years): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_zoology_of_the_voyage_of_the_H.M.S._Erebus_and_Terror_(6257851283).jpg