James Owens's most recent book is Mortalia (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent publications in Adirondack Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Honest Ulsterman, and Southword. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.

“To My Wife in the Untended Field” comes out of an afternoon when he and Erin, his wife, stopped at a little parking area just off the highway, on the north shore of Lake Huron, a late afternoon when the low-angled sunshine was involved with the purple stalks of devil's bugloss, dissolving them into a glow, a gleam, a glister that seemed an invitation into some other state of being, where they both had been before and still are, in some true sense. The landscape there is rich with such unregarded, truly ordinary and sacred places, if one is willing to see them.