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       Poems

      by Frank LaRue Owen

       Winner of the 2017 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize

      Homebound Publications

      Ensuring the mainstream isn’t the only stream

      www.homeboundpublications.com

      Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher: Homebound Publications, Postal Box 1442, Pawcatuck, CT 06379. www.homeboundpublications.com

      Published in 2018 • Homebound Publications

      Front Cover Image © Trần Anh Tuấn

      Cover and Interior Designed • Leslie M. Browning

      First Edition Trade Paperback: 978-1-947003-96-5 | eBook: 978-1-938846-62-5

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      1

      “Who said my poems are poems?

       These poems are not poems.

       When you realize that my poems are not poems,

       then we can talk of poetry.”

      –Ryōkan Taigu, Zen hermit-poet

      2

      “The third poetry is sometimes never written;

       but when it is, it is written by those

       who have brought nature and art

       together into one thing.”

      –Walter Inglis Anderson

      3

      Dedication

      for doña Río,

       who guided me

       into the wilderness

       of the self, and

       the wilderness

       of New Mexico

      for my mother,

       a lifetime student

       in the school of soft-attention,

       who encouraged me at an early age

       to listen to Nature deeply,

       to pay attention to dreams,

       and to consult the I Ching

      and

      my father,

       for river-times

       and

       “black water cartography”

      4

      Preface

       The Dao of Receiving

      “A man doesn’t go in search of a poem; the poem comes in search of him.” –Yang Wan-Li

      Outside: gray day, dark clouds, white frost on branches.

      Inside: I sit wrapped in a blanket beside a rain-dappled window

       gazing up at the swaying sentinel pines, contemplating Dao.

      A black-capped chickadee, adorned with all the same colors of this day, darts in and out of view. Flowing with the moment, a thought stirs like feathers ruffling:

      Heart-Mind, left to its natural state, is vast as a panorama of Nature.

       If settled, receptive, a poem may arrive like the seed-hunting chickadee flitting through.

      A splash of color. A flash of life and movement. A brief moment in this shared dream. Are we truly present to receive it? This is the path, on this gray day, and every other day.

      Words emerge from the silent illumination of the wordless Dao.

       Yet, words can never be complete.