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Posts Tagged ‘Southern writing’

Saturday Share – Scott Owens

Posted in Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , on September 26, 2026| 2 Comments »

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Saturday morning readers share:
Scott Owens
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A History of Rivers
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It’s Monday.
I cross the Yadkin River again,
as I have every Monday for the two years
my grandson has been in this world,
as I did twice a month for 10 years
delivering my stepson to his father,
as I’ve done once a year for 30 years
heading to the beach for our family vacation.
And each of these have had return trips
where I’ve crossed the Yadkin again.
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I don’t know how to count
the number of times I’ve crossed this river,
but each time I do, my eyes grow wider
to let more in, my skin tingles,
my breathing grows quiet and slow.
It’s not fear, not my daughter’s gephyrophobia,
but awe, excitement, anticipation,
as the earth falls away below me,
and I feel again the history of rivers
as borders separating here from there,
known from unknown, a simple crossing
of something beautiful into something so full
of potential it reawakens the life within me.
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Scott Owens
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Needing No Heaven
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My mother sends me my childhood Bible.
I remember 53 years ago,
when we had little,
I would get myself up early
on Sunday mornings, make breakfast,
get dressed, catch the bus to church,
alone, hoping to find something more,
then praying I was sitting in the right seat,
the one with the lucky number taped to the bottom.
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One time, I was.
This was the prize.
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I read it three times through,
and occasionally again over the years,
looking for logic, marking lines,
The living God is among you,
Is with thee wheresoever thou goest,
gradually losing faith,
not in God,
but rather, in this God.
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The marks are still there.
When you think that I am gone,
do not search for me in someone’s heaven.
I have already found heaven here.
Look for me in the earth you turn for planting.
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Scott Owens
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Scott recently wrote to me that he’s been on a “nature statement kick.” If that means he is consciously thinking and writing about the relationship of us humans with the natural world, it doesn’t detract from the fact that all his poetry is colored, overtly or subtly, by that relationship. Scott and I have discussed how the four tasks of the naturalist are perfectly congruent with the tasks of the poet — pay attention, ask questions, make connections, share. Lately I’ve been thinking about a fifth imperative for the poet — remember. And isn’t memory also demanded of the naturalist? Our relationship with nature stretches across time, always changing and yet always anchored.
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I hope in those future days when I am not living on this Earth, my grandchildren will notice some September afternoon the wispy seeds of Burnweed drifting past them and remember me.
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Additional poetry by Scott Owens at Verse and Image:
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
— Bill
 . 
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Geography of One – Richard Allen Taylor

Posted in family, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on September 25, 2026| 11 Comments »

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[ 3 poems by Richard Allen Taylor ]
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Continental Divide
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When I drop the word cry on the spine
of a mountain ridge, weep flows down
one side, shout down the other, one word
split into different-meaning halves,
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then face will follow, turning toward
the Eastern slope while becoming the front side
on the West, and
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check will hesitate at first, not sure whether
to inspect for defects or stop a moving object,
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but before I drop the word orange,
I have to decide whether to eat it or wear it,
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and I discover the word colonizing, when released
from high altitude, might burst into colon and zing
like a couple divorced for irreconcilable differences,
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and knowing that rivers seldom head straight for
the sea, but wander sometimes in great bends
and curves before they reach home, one must
be careful when dropping a grenade like love.
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Richard Allen Taylor
from The Geography of One, Main Street Rag Enterprises, Edinboro, PA; © 2026
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Blessed Are
 .  .     after “Ode on Inheritance” by Kate Partridge
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Perhaps there is no inheritance worth having
that does not include a narrative of water—
a river, a lake, an ocean
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pounding on the beach below the open windows.
My father bought a farm
with a white house on a hill, a pond
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at the bottom. My mother inherited. She later sold.
All of it was, shall we say, liquidated.
Gone, the tiny lake
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fed by a stream tumbling over my father’s modest
ambitions. Just as well. My brothers and I sought
neither the view nor the serenity.
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We were reaching elsewhere, for something
less pastoral, more hopeful,
something more highway
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than country road. But even a cave can elicit hope.
The torch goes out, we thrust our hands
forward, grope walls,
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feet following our blindness. As if a hole could lean
against its sides. All it takes is the will
to swap adjectives.
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Trade wet for slick. Choose briny over soaked.
Here we go again with that
narrative of water. Snow, hail,
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ice melting in your palm. Later, when drought
squeezes the pond dry, a spark catches,
and fire climbs the hill—
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everything promised burns. The difference between
bold and meek becomes a matter of timing.
Bold when we rush forward
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to extinguish the blaze. Meek when the flames
force us back to a place
where faces do not melt.
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When rain finally comes, we inherit the memory
of blackened hills, even if no lawyers or signatures
attend. When grief follows, we console ourselves.
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We say the trees bury their seeds under layers of ash.
We say the trees dream of resurrection..
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Richard Allen Taylor
from The Geography of One, Main Street Rag Enterprises, Edinboro, PA; © 2026
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Song for a Wind with No One Left to Talk To
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Now that you’re alone, wind,
where will you go?
north, sough, high, low
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Now that you sleep, wind,
what will you know?
peace, love, war, snow
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Now that you’re empty, wind,
how will you fill?
zephyr, gust, sail, chill
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Not that you’re free, wind,
what else will you be?
home, afar, aloft, alee
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Now that you die, wind,
how will you rise?
cloud, star, spirit, sky
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Richard Allen Taylor
from The Geography of One, Main Street Rag Enterprises, Edinboro, PA; © 2026
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About a month shy of 60 years ago, DuPont transferred my Dad (again) and we moved from Michigan to Aurora, Ohio. The first of November was my first day of eighth grade in my new school, and my first class was German with Fräulein Appenzeller. I shuffled my feet while she introduced me, then declared that they already had a Wilhelm in the class and therefore christened me Fritz. For the next five years most of the kids in Aurora thought my real name was Fritz.
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I sat down and looked around the classroom. I don’t remember much from that morning, but I do recall that there was one girl with long dark hair and very red cheeks. I mean really red, like silver dollar sized lipstick circles. Was this an arcane German class ritual? Turns out it was lipstick, from Halloween the night before. Turns out she had tried really hard but hadn’t been able to wash it off. Turns out her name was Linda. Turns out eight years later, in 1974, we would get married.
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Turns out we still are. During those almost 60 years now the proportion of time we have driven each other completely nuts has been far less than the proportion of time we have made each other laugh. Or at least smile. Smiling — I love that.
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Smiling is what these little paragraphs are about. Richard Allen Taylor’s poetry always, always makes me smile. His new book of poetry is crammed to bursting with smiles. Not just the poems that are funny – slyly, wickedly, innocently, unexpectedly funny. Also and even more so I am smiling with Richard and with his poems about these last few years he has lived alone, and about the three decades he and Julie were married before her death from leukemia. Smiling because love remembered and relived in such a pure, tender, and honest way lights up the world. Smiling because it is a gift to discover a poet willing to give so much of himself or herself.
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Turns out, Richard, that you are the world’s biggest mensch, and I love you. Keep smiling.
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❀
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Order Geography of One from Main Street Rag Enterprises.
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
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Richard Chess – The Loneliest Monk

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , on August 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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[ 2 poems by Richard Chess ]
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In That Classroom, He Dwelled
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1.
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Our attention wrapped him in a sacred scroll.
That’s how intensely we regarded him, eager
for whatever spark—one of his insights,
one of ours—would ignite him.
And when it came, the calf-skin parchment
blazed, but the letters were not consumed
by the flames. They were freed from story, song, and law.
Then it was up to us, students and our guide, to gather
the consonants and vowels, adrift like confetti,
and arrange them to reveal
secrets hidden by the plain, original text.
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2.
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Of course none of this is true.
No unburnt alphabet. No fire. No Torah scroll
in which he was wrapped. And the students’ attention?
The fierce concentration? That devotion?
Who do you think they were? Monastics?
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I was his student, too.
After he closed the classroom door,
turned to the text at hand, and read it
aloud, he’d ask the class, his congregation,
what we heard. No right or wrong,
he assured them. You hear what
you hear. Thus began the hour.
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On the chalkboard, he scribbled illegibly, letters
as if an alphabet from another world.
Was he, as he stood
with his back to twenty pairs of eyes,
a vessel into which a spirit poured?
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3.
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I bumped into him yesterday at the gym.
Dumbbells his devotion now. He didn’t remember me
or the poem I interpreted—brilliantly, he wrote
on my paper. We exchanged a few words, nothing
special, nothing to illuminate our souls.
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4.
The weight of worship, that’s what it was, worship
in that classroom, the only Temple for him,
the only place where, without a thought
of God, he dwelled with God, one line, one word,
one syllable, one consonant, one vowel—
one breath at a time.
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Richard Chess
from The Loneliest Monk, Orison Books, Asheville NC; © 2026
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❀    ❀    ❀
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From Generation to Generation
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Where did it go, the faith
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
after it entered his father’s life?
The highway from Philly to High Point,
a traveling salesman’s road.
The commission provided
for his mother and him, the adopted son.
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For his bar mitzvah, the boy
who would become a yearning man, received
a Smith Corona Super Sterling typewriter.
Ever since, he’s been typing
his way to Eden’s gate.
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What could his father make of a boy
who would never sell a thing hi his life?
A boy who escaped through a window
of words, turning pages
while in another room family and friends
noshed and laughed?
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Did his father ever imagine, driving
his Oldsmobile Cutlass, AM radio crackling,
that his son would but a period
on the sentence of his territory—Pennsylvania
to North Carolina—by settling
at the farthest point from home on his map?
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The boy’s inheritance:
a sunburst mirror, diamond plaques—
a set of four, one for each season.
Plastic wall décor, samples
his father left behind, stored in the garage.
Meanwhile, the boy, now grown,
clacks another line.
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If there were scissors in heaven,
his father would send a clipping
of a news story about a good life to his son:
a putting green, a winning
local team, a stock market beyond
heart-stopping wild swings.
But he does not want his son
to join him, not tomorrow, not today.
Let him make as much of heaven
as he can there, in the monkish solitude
of his mountain room, his father prays,
though he never was one for prayer.
Let’s call it a wish.
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Richard Chess
from The Loneliest Monk, Orison Books, Asheville NC; © 2026
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Richard Chess writes that he is not the lonely monk. Not lonely with so many students and teachers spanning the decades, not lonely because of his many friends. Perhaps most of all not lonely because words visit him, gather about, perch on his shoulder to whisper, sometimes shriek. And yet there is a space where words dissolve, where etymologies and taxonomies lose their substance in the mist and swirl, which space one calls nothing and another calls everything. In that place, aren’t we all sentenced to loneliness?
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Quantum physicist Richard P. Feynman has written, “Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? . . . And I do not think either end is nearer to God. To stand at either end, and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is the complete understanding, is a mistake.” The monk is never lonely because it is always him and God. The monk is always lonely because it is only him and God. And the monk is loneliest, perhaps, because this long journey is a solitary one, the journey of gathering up those words again and herding them back into some order that at least aspires to perfection. That waves away the obvious impossibility of the task and nevertheless orders the words to convey.
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We readers, we companions on that journey, we are also lonely monks. We walk into that space of words (or run, or jump) and hope. Will it be just the poet and us? Or will it be us, the poet, and God?
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Richard Chess is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, where for more than three decades he taught courses in English, Creative Writing, and Jewish Studies. Among his other wide ranging service, he has been active in The Association for the Contemplative Mind In Higher Education. The Loneliest Monk is Richard’s fifth book of poetry.
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Orison Books focuses on writing that expresses the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives. The Loneliest Monk is available HERE
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Other poems by Richard Chess at Verse and Image:
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[The quotation by Richard P. Feynman is from a talk he gave at Cornell University in 1964, broadcast by the BBC and published in Feynman’s book, The Character of the Physical Law; excerpted in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, edited by Timothy Ferris; Little, Brown, and Company © 1991 by Timothy Ferris.]
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree, 2022-05-17A
 . 

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