Most poems about quarrels spend their words on the quarrel. Dave Bonta's "After arguing" spends almost none. The raised voices and the disagreement itself, whatever it was, all happen before the poem begins, and the title is our only evidence of them. What we get is the quiet afterward: "In the evening we came to agreement / as a barn owl to a barn." That is two lines and one sentence, and the emotional weather has changed completely.
The central idea is that reconciliation can feel less like a deal struck and more like a homecoming. "Came to agreement" sounds like the language of contracts and negotiations, yet the usual "an" is missing ("came to an agreement"). Without it, agreement sounds less like a document and more like a place, somewhere you can arrive. The second line takes that hint and runs with it. A barn owl does not bargain with its barn. It goes back, by instinct, to where it belongs. The comparison suggests that neither person won a point. They drifted back to something that was already there beneath the argument.
The choice of creature matters. Barn owls are birds of dusk, and they are known for flying almost without sound. That silence carries over to the human scene. There is no apology speech and no triumphant handshake, only a settling that happens as softly as the bird's arrival. The word "evening" works hard too. It names the time of day and the end of the day's heat, and it may also quietly suggest the verb, to make things even. The poem never underlines that second meaning, and the judgment is ours to make, but the word is there for anyone who hears it.
The construction is neat for something so small. The second line has no verb of its own. "As a barn owl to a barn" borrows "came" from the line above, so two clauses share one verb and two travellers move in the same direction. The grammar enacts the agreement it describes. Nobody has to say "I give in"; the sentence simply holds both parties inside a single movement.
Sound does a lot of the work, since there is no rhyme. The first line rocks along in an easy, nearly galloping rhythm: "in the EVE-ning we CAME to a-GREE-ment." The long *e* of "evening" returns in "agreement," like two voices finding the same note. The second line is shorter, and its stresses bunch together. "Barn owl" gives two heavy syllables in a row, and then the line drops onto "barn" again. That repeated word lands like a door closing, or a bird folding its wings. The poem stops where the owl does, at the word for home.
The image is also less sweet than it might have been. A dove would be the obvious bird for peace-making. A barn owl is pale and nocturnal, a hunter, a little eerie. Choosing it gives the reconciliation dignity and some strangeness, which feels truer to how real arguments end: with relief and tiredness, not sugar. The poem also never says who yielded, or whether either of them is happy. "We" is the only subject, and it stays unbroken to the end.
What makes the poem worth reading closely is how much it trusts its image. A weaker version might have used adjectives like "relieved," "calm" or "forgiven." Bonta lets one comparison carry all of that feeling, and the reader supplies the rest. The argument is left blank, so we can fill it with our own, and perhaps that is why the ending lands so easily. The brevity also fits the subject. After an argument, people often need fewer words, not more, and the poem makes that point by using so few.
For a student learning to read poetry, it is a good lesson in noticing what has been left out. The missing quarrel, the missing "an," and the missing second verb are all silences, and each one helps the poem feel like an evening after a long day, with everything finally quiet.