Bruce Owens lives in Hollister, California. About his work, Mr. Owens writes, "I was born on the East Coast, but raised on the West Coast. Recently my wife, and I moved from Santa Cruz, California inland from the coast.
One of my poems appeared in the Robinson Jeffers Newsletter (No. 93 & 94, Winter & Spring) in tribute to friend, and fellow poet William Everson.
I have been a guest lecturer at various colleges in California, lecturing on the nature of the creative process, and I have conducted poetry workshops, mainly with young adults, especially those struggling with various addictions or having come from an abusive household, using poetry as an instrument of discovery both self, and as an entry into the world around us.
Recently, I self-published a collection of poems: Eddies in the Rush (ISBN 0-971256-0-0 [149 pg.]) endorsed by William Stafford, a National Book Award recipient."
There is stillness here.
I stand
listening
into everything that is alive.
A red-wing blackbird darts upward
from the rush that conceals a nest,
pushing back the crow that is like a glider
drifting backwards with full extended wings.
At first I thought the smaller bird to be
the infant of the larger
but the gist was a simple warding off,
protection hardwired into the
small bird with red medals pinned at the shoulders.
The crow gave off its dark syllabic caw,
and flew off. The blackbird came back
perching on a wavering reed of rush.
Off in the distance the heat wavering above the fields,
a low murmur of migrant workers
hoeing between the rows of green sprouts of garlic:
the faint laughter mingled with Spanish,
and the blackbird blowing on his small trumpet,
a deep throated whistle known only to its kind.
I climb back into my pickup kicking up a little dust.
In front of me on the road, a squirrel darts out
of nowhere in existence. My rearview mirror
tells me nature has its timing. I want to listen
into this but the small pain in my chest
tells me my time will come to pass soon enough.
I wanted to turn around, and undo this thing,
but I missed my chance at integrity
like the blackbird warding off the
crow.
stillness mirrors the stars.
Black birds snap clean,
and dart in swarms above the fields.
Some birds carry red jewels
on their shoulders unlike the hawk
who blends with the tone of earth.
Other small birds have breast of yellow fire.
The river hills and dells go green with rain.
Night slips in with the surge of surf.
Creeks and streams go down into the quiet of ocean,
and shoreline tide-pools catch stars with clear nets.
Out on the dark kelp forest, petrels
let loose their speech, and chatter on the roll of swells.
It is the ocean canyon miles deep
that brings sea creature closer in
to where the dwellings of men
dot the night with their window light,
farm house, and fields along the coast highway.
The beams of a car round a curve far off
in the dark where the sea walls rise to meet the trees:
the bark of seals, hiss in the gleam of sea boulders,
moonlight on the stream in the deep of night.
A fingerprint here
no one can decipher like bark peeled
from the trunk of a fallen Douglas Fir,
and along the inside of the bark insects
have carved their cuneiform trail in silence.
who was raised in the forest
and not on television, I came to the forest
believing in all the fairytales.
Odd how a strange courage would rise up
in me like a fire the color of autumn
and strange how fast my little mind
fell victim to the dark. The winter trees
had fingers that could freeze a wee soul.
But I looked back into that snow filled forest
and there was no horse with bells that rattled,
only faint bird cries, brittle as icicles in the night .
The neighborhood houses were warm inside
and I hurt from hunger
but still I lingered at the edge of the forest.
Here, where the road was safe
after the snowplow had past, would not
be the place that would transform the child into hero.
But the little warrior heard his mother calling
and soon my footsteps took on a steady pace
not home, not home
but rather to that darker place
into the forest of Finn mac Cumhail.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway2002. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Bruce Owens. All rights reserved.
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