Fog

Fog is unresolved poetic thoughts. Fog is what happens to false starts, scraps of paper and notebooks that are only written in and never read. The Grand Banks are roughly 155 miles off of the coast of Newfoundland*. With over two hundred days of fog a year, it’s the foggiest place on earth. Considering the fact that people sleep better in fog it seems ironic that so many foggy nights settle on thick, unstable water. Unfortunately most people believe fog is simply a cloud that touches the earth. The difference between fog and mist is distance. If the visibility is less than a kilometer it’s fog; over two kilometers, it’s mist. I’m undecided if I want to discuss mist. It’s not a coincidence that the word mist shares sounds with myth.

The sound of fog is often mistake for wind. Though it’s typically deeper, with a hint of metallic. It’s most accurate description of it is that it resembles wind pushing through a rusted French horn. On the hill opposite ours, a German soldier played the trumpet as fog seeped into the valley. Colonel Soland got out of the jeep, walked to the side of the road and lifted binoculars to his eyes. That night it would rain. In the morning, three of our soldiers would be dead. I got out of the jeep, walked to other side of the road and urinated. When I turned back to the jeep it had disappeared. Sooner or later, everything disappears.

You should be able to write a poem blindfolded. You should be able to write a poem without saying a thing. You should be able to write a poem while a house is burning. You should be able to explain this. If you can’t, there’s no point. I wrote this while sitting in my car while it sat in fog.


*Somewhere in the area of 45 degrees 00' North latitude, 49 degrees 00' West longitude. I sailed there in a 28 foot sailboat to check on specific location but was nervous in that thick fog. I intended to SCUBA dive there but, embarrassingly, lost my nerve.