You don’t know how these shards of broken jar,
The memory of menthol and eucalyptus
Above the sidewalk and littered blue glass,
Have come to soothe the city’s hard winter air.
The world has beaten you—money, fear
Of lacking money, received and given harm—
But again you are a child and far from here,
Loved, trying not to weep, in bed and warm.
James Owens’s newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Poetry Ireland Review, Channel, Arc, The Classical Outlook, and Atlanta Review. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama ande lives in a small town in northern Ontario.