James Owens

Poem Ending with an Allusion to Issa

 

A pink scumble of cloud
in the eastern quarter,

brightening as the sun
ignites the horizon,

and frost on grass and roofs
repeats the colour, faintly.

Winter has already turned
toward another Spring,

so there must be stirrings
deep in the soil, seeds thawing,

insects ticking as hints
of the fertile warmth find them.

The gleam fades to a pale day,
and in the same world

where the great poets have lived,
I feel about average.

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James Owens‘s newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Arc, Dalhousie Review, Queen’s Quarterly, andAtlanta Review. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.