I've touched this stone so many times,
The edges wear to silk.
Dozens of poems have I penned,
Valleys painted milk.
Why is the yield so generous?
About that which yields nil?
How is there such insight,
From that which vision fills?
Much of my work overflows,
With screens of endless grey.
Am I married to mystery?
Or have I naught to say?
Is it just some shallow link?
Aesthetic and unwhole?
A rare positive nostalgia,
Occupying my soul?
Perhaps it is born from spite,
As heaven falls to earth.
Let their clouded temples break,
And blinded, prove their worth.
Maybe it's as simple as
A self destructive vice;
God knows I'm an escapist,
Have always paid that price.
But I think there is something more
Hidden within that veil,
A misty, fogged, metaphor
I'll attempt to assail.
Fog is not just drapery
We pull back to reveal
Some objective persistency,
Which waits, solid and real.
Nor as some analogize,
Is haze an unmade choice,
A stand-in for uncertainty;
A thing without a voice.
Useful poeticisms,
That yes are tried and true;
But more than these the murk demands,
Should we find our way through.
Precipitate is water;
Conductor; Catalyst.
Balances the temperatures,
On its power insist.
When we are completely lost,
Enveloped in it's shroud,
There is a conversation;
Things get turned around.
Or perhaps we spend some years
In a stupor confused;
The living world changes her shape,
Life now fog infused.
It can shoulder weary hearts
From who they're forced to be.
Mayhaps there is worthwhile love,
Too burned to naked see.
Fog is not a curtain, or
A maze, or a disease.
It is not only a cloud
Hanging over warm sea.
It does not pass over homes
That unchanged, greet the morn.
It is a chorus of ghosts;
Song quiet, forlorn.
Fog is a world in itself,
Where plurality hides
Inside a single empty face,
Seen from a million sides.
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Comments3
Brilliant!
'But I think there is something more
Hidden within that veil,'
'A stand-in for uncertainty;
A thing without a voice.'
'Precipitate is water;
Conductor; Catalyst.
Balances the temperatures,
On its power insist.
When we are completely lost,
Enveloped in it's shroud,
There is a conversation;
Things get turned around.'
'Fog is a world in itself,
Where plurality hides'
'Should we find our way through.'
Thanks for this contribution. Writing about writing is a fine old tradition! Sometimes not seeing clearly is a blessing, a respite, and chance to imagine instead of look. Those Monet paintings of the Rouen Cathedral shrouded in fog guide us to the outlines, silhouette, not the details. And as you suggest, being "lost" in your own community or in the middle of nowhere can be as liberating as it is confounding.
Something profound about the symbolism here! I was amused by how you described the “fog” as the:
It is a chorus of ghosts;
Song quiet, forlorn.
The ambiguity behind poetry is a gift,
Cursed or blessed, the poet has no other fate…
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