..................................................for the realist
Fog-locked for three weeks we breathed the haze that hung on trees and
...........hooped the mountain-town, a valley pooled with the stuff of
nothing. A hand could slide through a heap of sidewalk-fog and—
...........briefly—retrieve itself. Fog in the mouth, across the tongue,
fog in the bronchi, owl-gray abrasions, an air so cinderthick no
...........deepening was possible—no place to leave to.
Where will you go?
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.......................When the cold fell a fog-frost beaded the weed-
stems and faintly feathered the tree-tips. Imperceptibly a pattern
began to make itself felt—the gravel, the fat brown sparrows that never
...........returned to our feeder—everything wants to be scarved in ice,
everything wants to be hallowed.
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......................This was never true. The seconds that pass
pass at your expense, and vaguely one day you find yourself
hardened and the stiff films of tree-lace gone. Where did you go?
...........While you were away
_________________
.................................................the early dark-of-early winter entered
each thing and burrowed in. A tinge of ink in the red pickup
with its obscene tires, a blackening tint to the air that spooks the empty
...........houses then spreads its soot-silt across lowering clouds,
the bright-white sky-streaks above those walking home pushed
...........back by the aerial night. These
are no imagined sorrows. You are the light of the world with me
...........who have also felt a heaviness gather in the present hour
and against all confusion stepped
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...............................................onto a backroad daily exposed to the sun's
fierce and incremental shuffle, where strange balls of fleece
(sheep) stare and dry clouds pass shadow-ponds over dead grass.
...........Here is space also to grow attached to surfaces, the way seaweeds
hold to those bathed by water (the undersides of boats, ropes, piers),
...........to feel (at the same time!) sixteen waxwings in the juniper
and the moon glint across the mountain's mica veins.
...........Here is the real world
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given in exchange for that illusion of weather you call life
...........or the way things are and should you find it can't sustain you
(or you miss the wry urban chatter or the concrete plums in the fridge)
...........you can leave whenever you like—I'll stay with the mutable fish,
................................._________________
the parking lot that was ten thousand years ago a sea,
...........the seaweeds (which bloom here and have roots) and yard-weeds
and two women laughing, clutching wet paper bags as their eyes
...........leap with cold, each heart beating against the heart-of-
fog or ice or smoke-still
...........night. Snow-bits make fine nets in their hair.
--Joanna Klink