27 April 2016

So thick the fog
and mist this morning,
I cannot see the steeple
rising a block away. April
looms the air with mystery,
living, as we do,
next the ocean in spring.

Rowers would appear ghosts
were they seen
to move about in this soup,
ghosts feeling their way,
as though blind,
no weather for much
of anything other than
sitting indoors thinking of
what to do,
polish their oars, perhaps,
and tell tales, some of which
the taller the better.

A rowboat bumps on the invisible river,
bumped up and down on the incoming
tide, boat and tide
heard, not seen,
so low is the ceiling
of the sky. I reach up
and scratch the belly of it.

Why I am out in this
is anyone’s guess.
I explain it by way
of my being a poet.
My senses hunger for the experience
that I might eat of it,
chew it into verse.

Yet fog, itself, is
not much of a meal.
I can’t sink my teeth
into the meat of it,
which is why I digest it
by words, to get at
its nutrients.

This is, then,
how I make
the spirit appear
in existence, as an existing
being, breathing
on me the breath
of inspiration,
my trick to get
written what needs to be.

Philip Kuepper
(1 April 2016)