V E R S E and I M A G E

The mountains came down to Hickory today.

It happens now and then.

Clouds low, mist hanging between the trees,

a coolness that makes everything feel

less urgent, more contemplative.

I saw a boy on a hillside, sitting,

back leaning against a tree,

not minding the fine mist

against his skin at all.

I imagine he was writing.

I imagine it was a poem

about the mountains coming down to Hickory.

I imagine he was me.

It happens now and then.

from The Song Is Why We Sing, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press; Hickory NC © 2026

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I picked up a knot from the ground today,

not an important knot,

not of significant size,

not of any significance really,

at least not initially,

but then I realized if not for the knot

I likely would not have noticed it at all.

In fact, the knot would have just been

a string, not of any special size,

not of any noticeable color,

not anything special about it at all,

but the fact that it was tied into a knot

made it not exactly like every other

unknotted expanse I’d seen.

Of course, I thought about unknotting the knot

but ultimately decided not to,

as the knottiness was exactly what made it

exactly what it was and continues to be,

a knot not like any other,

insured by its knottiness

not be left unnoticed.

from The Song Is Why We Sing, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press; Hickory NC © 2026

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Reading a poem is like turning over a mossy log. As you approach, you appreciate the appealing form of the log without even thinking about it. Its green cushion, so inviting, perhaps a scent of fresh pungent life. But when you turn the log over, who knows? I am personally a fan of grubs and larvae, flabbergasted ants grabbing their white nits and sprinting in all directions, an oozy slug or two. Double bonus if there’s a salamander.

But beneath some logs there’s just not much. A few bark fibers lingering in their immediate pre-humus status. A tired worm casting. Dirt. If that’s all there is beneath the mossy log of the poem, I’m done. Maybe I’ll go turn over that rock over yonder instead. I, the reader, need something to discover when I get down on hands and knees and shift the poem. I have to do the work of coming closer, of noticing, and the poem has to do its work of sharing.

Scott Owens’s newest collection of poems, The Song Is Why We Sing, is about poetry. Writing poetry, to be certain, but even more this book is about reading poetry. And maybe most of all so many of these poems are about the partnership, let’s even call it companionship, between writer and reader. The lines and stanzas break down the fourth wall. I as reader become part of the process, part of the poem. Perhaps in reading no other book of verse have I been so intimately invited into the mind and life of the writer. Scott’s offer is sincere – here I can be half the poet.

Scott’s poems are existential knots that freely allow themselves to be untied. They offer up their essence like a flower offers nectar, hidden but discernable, just follow your nose, and always keeping the promise of a sweet droplet on the tongue. I first encountered the term “quiddity” in a philosophy book but I know I first read the word “dailyness” in a poem, and so are these poems, filled with essence and substance. Here is the world with its warts and its wonderfulness. Scott takes seriously his poet’s calling of showing you what you already know in a way you’ve never seen. That mossy log, what lies beneath? I am dying to turn it over. And throughout these pages I know I will find what this poet is determined to show me, because as he says, You have to care / enough about the world / and all who live in it / to take the time / to not just find the words / but also get them right.

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fr. Latin, chorus, those who do the work, who carry the play forward

(titles from Poetry in Plain Sight selections July 2025)

I rise from my knees, not from prayer,

not from planting autumn blooming crocuses,

but from fixing a table bending beneath

the weight of too many ovens. Still,

any rising is a good thing.

In the heat of early July in the South

I head out to make my monthly delivery

of poems. One called “Tomato Sandwich,”

transforming the taste of summer to art,

for the front window of my coffee shop.

One called “Hum,” for the community theater,

about a boy remembering the sound

of his father blowing on his face to cool him

off in a Louisiana Church on Sundays.

Another called “Wild Women,” for the wine shop,

about girls who were told they couldn’t be cowboys,

who hitched up their chaps and spat on the ground.

And one for the library, called “Song

to a Little Tree under the Eve of Terminal 2

at Raleigh Durham International Airport,”

just about a tree in an unlikely place

refusing not to grow.

from The Song Is Why We Sing, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press; Hickory NC © 2026

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Scott Owens teaches at Lenoir Rhyne University, coordinates the Poetry Hickory program, and promotes poets and poetry year round at his coffee shop and gallery, Taste Full Beans. The Song Is Why We Sing is Scott’s twenty-sixth volume of poetry. Among his many honors and awards are two nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award and appointment as Hickory, NC, Poet Laureate. Scott’s most recent books are available from Redhawk Publications.

Sample additional poetry by Scott Owens at Verse and Image:

3/28/2025
4/22/2025
5/17/2024
1/6/2023
3/11/2022
11/18/2011 

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Perhaps you’d like to turn over a mossy log (metaphorically speaking)? Walk along Elkin Creek and discover Foamflower in bloom (for real beginning early April)? Watch a Blue Head Chub build its spawning nest in the creek? Breathe deep? Join me and other curious comrades on one of this spring’s naturalist walks, a program of Elkin Valley Trails Association. Upcoming dates are March 28, April 11, April 25. Details and registration (free!) here:

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. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;

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