Taking the boat out

truth, elusive as a loon,
bares down on us, the edge of a storm
black ice seas to come, it’s time
summer’s pleasures end, abrupt
falling  leaves, chill  northwest winds
ravage the mornings.  It’s obvious now
time to take the boat ashore
clean the bottom, wrap it up.

We never wish pleasant dalliance to end.
Jolly masks often hide the truth,
though some truths yield happiness
so many others do not.
Fickle the nature of truths,
what we accept and what we do not,
we do not want the summer to end,
we do not want our pleasant era to end.
but we know the truth of natures rhythm
man made storms have not the same even beat,
abrupt, crashing all out of proportion,
hard to face our doing, clouded
by the way we are, our nature,
our fabricated way of daily doing,
our dearest beliefs, deep structure of our brains
deny new unexpected truths,
“one can’t change human nature”,
though nature itself can change,
precious verities can be destroyed by us
so when the hard truth sledge hammer hits
when we can’t deny it, it may be too late,
as if all froze, and we couldn’t break our boat out,   ever.

Ever?  This is a bit too much,
too apocalyptic for the melancholy season
loading it with Climate Change status.
Almost no one thinks like scientists
testing the present against the long term,
the decades to come, we think with normal rhythms,
face off the winter, grumble then glow
with glorious spring, bask in the summer heat
think apocalyptical when big ,storms come,
then forget, recover as the green fields do
after winter snow fades away.

It was a cool bright windy equinox morning
perhaps too windy but the tide was high.
So with the trailer and three strong men,
two in the 4 horse power Zodiac, took Selkie,
our 13 foot catboat, off the mooring.
But the wind filled the sail cover
like a horizontal spinnaker
and off Selkie flew downwind
with the Zodiac in hot pursuit.

Laughing they corralled it, brought it back
to its trailer, plucked out the mast
and with everything else loaded
in the back of big pickup trucks, took it home.

This is the way the summer ended,
at home, with mast and gear on the lawn
cleaning bottoms, putting the toys away.

Kent Bowker
20 September 2014

E. R.

Life is a circle
beginning and ending
intersecting,
between a curtain and an open door
a slit view on a corridor and life,
nurses, stretchers, wisping by,
the supine from other rooms
coming or going.  You speculate
who, what, where, knowing nothing
a nurse in pink the doctor in white
a parade of questioners
on a scale of 1 to 10
how do you exist?

Our Great Western Landscape

Our great western landscape
like the wilderness east of Jerusalem
.              mandates prophets.

Seers wandering in the shadows of mesas
.            and canyons bounding the wide
.            endless dry, ancient sea beds
Places for the desperate
.                  and the mad,
a land of delusions, mirage,
.           and brilliance, rocks, sky
.           and quick flashing storms of summer.

Pueblo Indian country, Ute and Mormon country,
.           gamblers, cows, and stubborn believers
.                         in wild religions,
seeing glory beyond their hard lives.
Veils cover the stark emptiness.

.                     Kent Bowker    8/10/14