Fool

 

The fresh morning dew glistens in a spider’s cell

our first breath of aborning day  sweet ambrosia

lilt of bird song and response far off in the shell

of woods enclosing us opening onto a calm sea

of thoughts unencumbered by a day’s demands.

 

These be the blessings we’ll have to carry us

through thorn and thistled ways, this lightness

of well being,  illusions perhaps but also true.

Like a Tarot Fool blithely walking off a cliff’s edge

a flower in one hand eyes lifted to the stars,

we too can float above our disasters to be

remembering the early light, the lilt of bird songs

and the  freshness in a  morning’s  breath.

 

Kent Bowker 9/16/2015

Nightcap Poem #76

 

 

The Marsh Intense

 

The marsh is intensely green now

flat out to the distant drumlins

the river, tide coming in, barely

covering parts at this moment

at the end of the day.  The sky

beyond is turning yellow

below the darker clouds.

And the half moon will open

through the cloud gaps

late night passages

to the ocean beyond.

We meditate, no wind

even the gulls are silent

at this moment of closure

as sun gives way to the moon

as if all life, ours too

is suspended. The day dies

as we will too in our cycle

our yellow sky the final rest

as it is tonight for the sun,

as we enter the unknown

realm of the moon.

 

Kent Bowker   7/23/2015

Nightcap poem # 22

 

Kent Bowker  started with poetry at Berkeley in the Fifties, then became a physicist working mainly in optics.  His new book of poems is Katharsis: Sifting Through a Mormon Past.  He lives in Essex, next to the Great Marshes and is treasurer of the Charles Olson Society.