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Poetry By
  Scott Owens


Published on: 3/5/2013
Prepositional

I had not thought to see
cedar waxwings in a greening tree
along the tracks in downtown
Blue Ridge, Georgia, with the sun
rising from mountains behind them
to a clear sky on a warm
morning in early April,
but once placed so importantly
before me, how could I help
but keep my eye on them.


Published on: 3/4/2013
In the Empty Places

In the gap between lightning
and the sound of lightning
you take my hand.

In the space between inhale
and exhale there is the sweetness
of expectation.

In the emptiness between desire
and satisfaction we know
a hunger that always returns.

In the time between moan
and pushing me away there is knowledge
that you are for me and I for you.
It is always in wading through such empty
spaces we feel this thing we call love.


Published on: 2/26/2013
All the Difference

Everything would have been different
if the trees had been evergreens,
if the wind had blown more leaves away,
if there had been more walkers
or the walkers had weighed more
or less, if I had thought then
what worked for them might work for you,
if I had known less
of how way leads on to way,
if I hadn't read Thoreau,
if my mother hadn't been full of regret,
if the day had been brighter or shorter,
or the time sooner, if there had been
even a single bird or squirrel
or the hint of anything moving in the distance,
if I had taken the other as just
as fair, or not stood as long
looking to where it bent in the undergrowth,
if I had worried about what ticks
there might be in tall grass.
Everything would have been different
if anything had been different at all.


Published on: 2/25/2013
At the View of a Wave or My Son Sledding on the Edge of Tragedy at Beech Mountain

Today I heard my son in the mirror
saying at 8 what I could never say,
what none of us were allowed to say,
much less believe, how much he liked
what he saw, how happy he was
with what he had become.

In my other life I would have
the house by now, the cat I raised
from a kitten, the wok I tempered,
the niece I taught to read, more peace,
more quiet, more nights in bed
not wondering what I'm doing here,
nothing of the hard work of life.

And though I know that words
say nothing but what they say
and often mean even less, nothing
could stop them from being real
to my mind, from placing blocks
in various walls, tearing down
what might have been built by now.

At the view of a wave or my son sledding
on the edge of tragedy at Beech Mountain,
I grow inconsolably sad
for all I haven't done,
all I've allowed to be forbidden.


Published on: 2/22/2013
Webwork

From porch rail to bush,
from fencepost to wire,
from trunk to limb,
one limb to another,
across walkways
and wooden steps,
interceding between self
and sun, strung up,
glistening with dew,
as taut as life itself.

As long as they exist,
there is no morning you can awake
and find the world
entirely disconnected.

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