Fog’s Hidden Gift
by Odin Roark

From still early morning lake waters,
to leaf-bare trees lining a country road,
fog’s density envelopes sun’s warmth,
takes flight and remains quietly patient
awaiting yet another day
to cast its visual spell,
its misty touch,
its baffling of sound
giving respite from man’s oft times
chaotic relationship with nature.

To walk such a road,
to sit idle at a lake shore,
to listen to the silence of reverence,
the cacophonous hush of but creature-breath,
holding still beneath the crystalline gray,
is to enjoin the ever-changing opportune known as nature,
allow temperature’s anomaly to heal the cuts and wounds
felt beneath flesh where a different kind of hot and cold temperature
becomes emotion’s ebb and flow of grayness
sometimes lifting, sometimes remaining indefinitely.

Such is the weathering of man’s gravitas,
that often dense fog of ambition’s amaurosis,
engulfing the manufactured life of urban addiction,
never venturing to an early morning,
or late evening cover of nature’s freedom-spirited cocoon,
where only peace and quiet are allowed.

What magic, this…

Nature’s fog lifts,
yet in its tether can rise so many of man’s ills
taken to that melt away place of renewal,
if we will but seek it out.

Take the journey,
pause,
listen,
see.

Fog’s hidden gift.