21 July 2024

By Philip Kuepper

The ocean lay luminous
just after dawn,
the dusk of sleep having been
swept clean awake.
A lone rower broke the water.
I sensed I heard the glass of it
crack.
I watched him break
the width of the bay,
round the far tip of it,
and disappear.
Appearing
from where he had disappeared,
an outboard speeding,
then throttling down, the throbbing of it
dying
to a sob. The cry
of a gull answered the sob.
The laugh of another
answered the cry.
A yacht blew a blast,
arrogant, self-important,
as it passed out
into the luminous ocean.
A workboat whistled.
A smack piped high, flutelike.
A cormorant watched all this
in silence,
then dove out of sight.
All this had been visible, audible.
But what caught my eye
was the quiet of the marsh grass
being moved by some invisible
force hidden in the thick
green growth of it,
the unknown quantity, and the effect
it was bound to have
on the whole.

(8 July 2024)