Fog

 

Fog

 

All winter this electric fire

& a tree door

closed room.  In fact

 

it was last fall

October probably

if I look back that started

 

mornings of warm

in these small walls.  All

the night a cold

 

kind patient waiting.

Years ago it was smoke

going up the chimney

 

& the children would sleep

through the descension

& pressure of ice

 

that declares it is

going to stay a while.  Today,

mid-April, a coastal

 

fog inland.  Road lights

make the moisture

seem to be lifted to

 

the hood & eye, slick

on the pole.  All my life

I’ve liked morning for

 

her quiet, her tension

mannerly, gracious

as a guest.  Probably

 

also because she is soft,

those Sandburg paws

walking almost weight

 

 

 

less.  Leaf drink leisure.

Smallish drops even

teeny to the briefest

 

& relief, her endurance

of winter rewarded with

heat of her labor then

 

cooled by this thick lithe

brightness that has nothing

to do with light

 

& more to do

with what I cannot be or

write, lissome at night

 

departed by daylight.