This World When Starlings Shimmer On the Grass
All have risen in sleep. We glide into the sky
over Pine Mountain, over the winding valleys,
runneled hillsides, family graveyards,
the homesteads of this longing to gather
the smoky, broken years aside like a veil.
We soar and hover, climb again for love
of the far moon, a way back into the brilliant
globe of childhood, the ache for flight we scoured
into our flesh like frost, like sand, like soot
—until the body tugs, insists on day,
and the sleeper turns,
regains the muddy shell and casts about
for a word to crack open the dream,
for threshold in the tongue of angels.
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, and Atlanta Review. Originally from Virginia, he earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario, Canada.
Amethyst Review 