quantum matrix of making and unmaking

11:11 AM Posted by James Owens

A poem in the Spring/Summer issue of Astropoetica

Wound

My son’s favorite question, when he was four,
was “What killed the dinosaurs?” He knew them all,
it seemed, in their lumbering or agile inventory
of species, the bird-hipped and the lizard-hipped,
the walnut-brained and doomed....

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5 comments:

sam of the ten thousand things said...

Excellent reprise of "Wound," James. Good work. Astropoetica is such an interesting approach to poetry.

C. E. Chaffin said...

Congrats! Ben is lucky to have you as a father. And great to see good science married to good art.

James Owens said...

Sam and C.E., thanks for coming by and reading. I'll say, immodestly enough, that this poem is one of my own favorites from among the things I've written in the past few years. It seems to me, who am not always the best reader of my own work, that this has a more "open", "inclusive" quality about it than anything else I've done. That's something I'd like to cultivate --- but I don't know how, really, since I'm not sure how it happened the first time....

C. E. Chaffin said...

These are called "donne's," French for gifts, and are almost always one's best poems. Can't explain it. Must be the basis for the myth of the muse.

Arlene said...

beautiful and fascinating poem, james. you have such a gift with words — that leaves me breathless afterwards.

hope to be reading you in tipton!

a.