Nine Pieces of a Fog paraded past me one morning. I was sitting canopy-high as it filled my street below, pouring between houses, building up from the ground as if telling the sky: no further. I let my mind empty as if in sympathy with the fog. Or was it with the weak morning light?
Carl Sandburg famously wrote: the fog comes in on little cat feet. Yet I knew a fog that rose up on the paws of a mountain lion as I was climbing in the Chisos. We were half-way up the trail when we noticed the fog gathering below us. We raced hard as we could, the cloud climbing faster, gaining on us. Before we reached the top, we had lost. Our hundred-mile view into Mexico was cut to ten feet, if that.
I plumbed its resolve and fastness by belting out ‘Mariah’. Heard my words travel so far and drop, felt them pushed back to me. I can’t sing well, but it was a stage I would not deny. The listening silence proved we were alone up there.
We had to come back the next day and do the Lost Mine Trail again. That’s when we realized we were on the cliff’s edge in the fog and never knew it.
Fog is the universal signal to settle in, quiet down, and think slower, deeper.
Nine Pieces of a Fog
`
the fog mills out
from a cloud
like an epic
birthing haikus
`
fog
like a storm’s
afterbirth
`
fog grates past me
like an iceberg
of whispers
`
fog as a curtain
of vapor, swishing
on its own
`
fog as untouchable
yet pushing me
to its celebration
`
fog as velvet glove
worn by rain
to caress greenness
`
fog: what is heard
when words are read
not spoken
`
fog
sent by storms
as apologies
`
fog
just the sky
taking a rest
~~~~~