You begin to feel guilty about not wanting these extra hours.
Winter was fine, the dark pulling close,
as snug as wool, by five,
then high-calorie dinners because snow blew through the night.
The light of a lamp on an open book,
like torchlight on an ochred wall,
prepared the mind to go down into its warm cave …
* poem, in its entirety, is available in the printed version of the current issue
Bio:
James Owens’ most recent book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming issues of Grain, the Dalhousie Review, Presence, and the Honest Ulsterman. He lives in a small town in northern Ontario.