Chuck Bowie
(June, 2019)

We met at St. Andrews, at low tide, on
the underwater road. In secret we
shared the closed, coded envelopes of thought,
running fresh ideas through open minds.

Our words, brief vapor trails, gathered for
a moment over Passamaquoddy,
before drifting silently away. Canvas sails
flapped white seagulls across the bay.

All seven seas rose before our eyes, brought
in on a breeze’s wing. The flow of cold
waters over warm sand cocooned us
in a cloak-and-dagger mystery of mist.

We spun our spider-web dreams word by word,
decking them out with the silver dew drops
proximity brings. Characters’ voices,
unattached to real people, floated by.

Verbal ghosts, shape-shifting, emerging from
shadows, revealed new attitudes and twists,
spoke briefly, filled us with visions of book-
lives, unforgettable, but doomed, swift to fail.

Soft waves ascended rock, sand, mud, to wash
away footprints, clues, all the sandcastle
dreams we had constructed that afternoon,
though a few still survive upon the printed page.

Comment:
This is a ‘get well soon’ post for my friend, Chuck Bowie. Let us hope it gives him that little boost all artists need, when they feel a little bit down. An excellent writer, I am pleased to support his work and bring it to the attention of the readers of this blog. The poem, incidentally, is taken from my own book, The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature.

Chuck and I met at St. Andrews, on the beach, and spent a pleasant hour or two discussing both art in general and the structure and characters of this book in particular.

Was that really in June, 2019, more than five years ago, when he was resident artist at KIRA? So many tides have risen and fallen since then. So much water has gathered and flowed. Vis brevis, ars longa – life is short, but our art outlives us – long may both authors and their art survive and flourish!