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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