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Before the Mid-Term Elections, a poem by James Owens


Before the Mid-Term Elections
by James Owens

Tonight the wind comes hard.
A rainstorm scours the yard
of summer's last leaves
and beats about the eaves
with force to loosen boards.
It warns in booming discords
that children sleeping warm
huddle near such harm
as is past all power to mend.
Beneath the burly wind,
I darken thought and watch,
as weather tries the latch.


James Owens's most recent collection of poems is Mortalia (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent publications in The Fourth River, Waxwing, Adirondack Review, Tule Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and Southword. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in Wabash, Indiana, and northern Ontario.