Read the poem ‘Again today I spoke to no one’ by Lucia Owen
This week’s poem, by Lucia Owen, draws us into a lake idyll tinged by the reality of forest fires to the north. I love this poem’s clarion progression of images, the speaker’s stillness among them, and the quiet candor with which she confronts the terrible loss.
Lucia Owen moved to western Maine to teach high school English in 1969 and can’t imagine living anywhere else. She began writing poetry seriously at about the same time she began taking care of her husband of 48 years at home. Since his death and now in her eighth decade, she finds that poetry helps her keep on keeping on. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. Find a link to submit credits at mainewriters.org/deep-water
Again today I spoke to no one
wandered from task to made-up task and back,
accomplished nothing but tearful gratitude
this morning sitting in my little skiff
in the middle of the still lake.
Haze and calm. I rest my oars, wait –
five loons surface, chortle to each other,
swim, dive, surface, swim away – vanish
against the far shore as they would have done
had I not been there. Witness unneeded
for the loons, the morning and the sky –
but haze – I do witness it, know it comes
from northern forests burning, know that
knowing is not enough, hardly know what I
can do, here rocking in my little boat,
imagining the perfection of the morning,
knowing the illusion. The wind
picks up and I row home.
– Lucia Owen
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Again today I spoke to no one,” ©2025 by Lucia Owen, was published as “The second day” in The Healing Muse. It appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.
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