FOG
We don’t have snow here
but some mornings the whole world
is white and hushed and soft with fog
and whatever troubles we went to sleep
clutched to our thudding hearts
have loosened overnight and are dissolving
in mist. The regal hills
to the East have been erased
behind a cottony scrim, and people
appear to appear
out of nowhere in the dawn hush.
An old woman in mask and gloves
pushes her shopping cart
full of salvaged empties. A mother hauls
two babies up the street, one in a backpack,
one in a stroller. A man
with dreadlocks and headphones
cruises by on his bike,
no-hands. All of them
whoosh into the frame
and then vanish. Like the future, or the past,
or some other dimension, alive,
but invisible to us.
—from Poets Respond
May 10, 2020
__________
Alison Luterman: “I feel a kind of mental fogginess creeping in as we enter week infinity of sheltering-in-place with no certainty about what the future holds—not that we ever had certainty, not really. At times like these it’s helpful for me to remember that there has always been mystery at the heart of life.” (web)
