Stirrup of the Sun & Moon: Poems

By Frank LaRue Owen

We Two-Leggeds are not limited to a physical body. We have capacities of perception beyond the usual five senses. Landscapes — inner, outer — can hold wisdom, healing-energy, memory, and teachings. A practice of attunement to the spirit of place is one viable path for the activity of a poet.  

So begins Stirrup of the Sun & Moon — a collection of poems rooted in the seasons, landscape, ancestry, memory of place, and the churning gyre of the soul. As you make your way through Frank LaRue Owen's third book of poetry, you will notice two features — both inspired by customs from early Chinese poetry — that orient and augment the poems. Every poem (with the exception of one) was composed be read with music and contains a liner note that includes the name of a song, its album, and composer. Additionally, some of the poems are place-centric and include the name and place coordinates associated with the poem. As you travel through Stirrup of the Sun & Moon, you will encounter poems-as-memory and poems-as-markers on a map, inspired by such diverse places as Northern California and Colorado, Mississippi and New Mexico. Saddle up!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Homebound Publications
• Release date: Apr 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780997592757

Book preview

On the Morning of Your Birth

—for Byron and Jennifer, for the gift of They Were Here—

"Every morning is a rebirth

if you’ve brought the proper eyes

and an awake heart-mind

to the gift of sunrise."

—doña Río —

On the morning of your birth

the animal of your body

had a yearning.

It flexed its tendons

and caused your eyes to open briefly.

Even in those first fierce moments

some part of you

was already wise to the world;

it wanted to throw off the harsh, unnatural light,

to join in with the wild and unconstrained.

Buried deep

behind your tightly-bound cage of ribs,

that ancient yearning to be received by the untamed

is still pulsing within you

despite all of your other disappointments.

The keeper of the old library of souls knows

until your need

for galloping through the terrain

of your wild-belonging is met

all manner of trouble

and destruction can occur.

The conversation can be put off for a while

but at some point

if you are to remain alive to yourself

you’ll have to swing yourself up

onto the windhorse of your original yearning

and join back up with the part of