Songs of a Late Night

Last night from the top of our rock
I watched a bronze disk
set furtively behind the woods
fragmented shining through tree tangles
shifting its aspect as we can do
seeing our pasts, our loves and hates
unfold as mysteries.
So much not understood in muddled language,
as we so often live in a fog of our doing.

I remember, in my twenties, the rush I felt
racing over the Bay Bridge with the top down
radio blaring the Italian Hour, Tartini’s ‘Devils Trill’,
Domenico Baccarini’s ‘Vertigo’
exultant.
High on the night’s kisses, bodies entanglements, the boozy fog
swirling about the bridge towers.

How do you disentangle Flesh and Soul in love?
Perhaps you cannot,
Until you lose the nightly connecting touch,
a love warm beside you. Sentiment perhaps.

The past and present are not so far apart-
the long trudge in between seems ignoble, forgettable
in the stress of making it. Keeping promises.
Remembering being
Seventeen, wondering about where to go.
Chopin’s Nocturnes, foggy night, I’m outside smoking.
Kent Bowker
May 25, 2016