This book of poems and memories is named for a type of cloud which occurs when particles of meteor dust, frosted by ice, gleam in the night sky.

As with Joni Mitchell, Reba Owen has looked at clouds, love, and life from many different angles over the years. Owen’s new book, “The Noctilucent Cloud and Other Memories,” honors that journey.

This slim volume begins with a title poem — a free verse observation that commends the “glowing aura when light is gone / and sparrows have ceased their vespers.”

Noctilucent clouds are meteorological phenomena that occur when particles of meteor dust, frosted by ice, gleam in the night sky. These particles are so high up in the atmosphere that they are illuminated by the sun’s rays well after the sun has set below the horizon from a ground-level perspective.

This week’s book

“The Noctilucent Cloud and Other Memories” by Reba Owen

Xlibris — 66 pp — $22.99

In the Northern Hemisphere, this iridescent spectacle is most likely to be seen in the night skies of early summer.

For those of us weather nerds who pay attention to things like noctilucent clouds, it’s fun to find a fellow enthusiast – and a pleasure to discover a poem on the topic.

Owen focuses on other wonders of the natural world, too.

In a poem called “Reminiscing,” she finds comfort in the onset of autumn, which brings flights of geese, phosphorescent surf and memories of driftwood bonfires.

In “Winter Wren Christmas Morning,” she is grateful for the little brown bird’s joyous aria, which “leads the way to a new dawn on the frost laden forest … “

Clearly, Owen is a close observer of, and a kind participant in, the natural world. You can read about the assistance she provides to a tiny spider in her poem, “Uber.”

This octogenarian poet has seen much of life, so some of these poems are tinged with melancholy as well as praise.

One of her longer poems, “Tables,” describes what sits atop the bedside tables of her dying mother, her sister and her father. The clutter of pills and skin cream, tissues and warm socks, “cannot change the outcome,” she warns, and goes on to advise that each of us consider our own bedside table: “small stage and / sanctuary / while you slumber / close.”

This book also contains essays that recall memories of growing up along the Willamette River, and the childhood exploits of the “River Forest Gang” of neighborhood kids who roamed along the local creek and through the old-growth woods — a landscape that now has been “replaced by giant homes, six-car garages, condos no one could afford, and docks for million dollar boats.”

Through the decades, Owen has written poems, snapped photos and composed bluesy songs.

Of the songs shared in this book, I suspect the one folks will most relate to is “Disappearing Brownie Blues.” It’s accompanied by a photo of an empty brownie pan.

There are some adorable cat photos, too, including one where a kitten photobombs a portrait of the author in a most unusual way.

Owen brought this book out via a “vanity press” — but it’s clear her impulse for creating this book was not vanity, but gratitude — for living a full life.