In case you don’t remember why you should remember Scott Owens, let’s revisit: His tenth collection of poetry, Shadows Trail Them home, is due out from Clemson University Press this fall, his work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the NC Writers Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC, his poems have appeared in journals such as Georgia Review, North American Review, Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry East, he is the founder of Poetry Hickory, editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review and 234, and vice president of the Poetry Council of NC. So, as if you needed a reason, there are a good number of them. There’s also just the fact that his work is divine. As you can see from his most recent poem to appear here: Reader (June 2012). 

Dawn the Way I Want Her To
By Scott Owens

This morning the sun comes up the way
it always does, and I sit here
writing it down: sky turning
from true blue to artificial pastels,
orange haze of nocturnal emissions
burning off, wet smell, clinging chill,
grass scraping its crust of sleep away.

Tomorrow, she will come the way
I want her to. She will be my wife
rising early to where I sit and wait
to write. She will be the grass
holding on to its caps of dew.
She will be my chair rocking hard
against the wall, the sky burning
indigo until noon, bawdy angels
pirouetting darkness into light.