Morning Mist

Do you ever have trouble finding things? I do. I hope it's just a phase I'm going through, but I've recently found that ... no matter what it is ... it always seems to be in a secret hiding place.

Then ... surprise! ... there it is, right under my nose.

Well, my first search of the day didn't turn out that way this morning.

When I bounded out of bed ... not really, but I like the sound of that phrase ... anyway, at the beginning of the day I was thinking about ... well, about beginnings ... and how I might utilize them.

This brought to mind one of my little poems, "Beginnings" ... and it seemed to me that it would be the perfect piece.

I searched everywhere ... beginning with where it should be ... and then all the places it shouldn't be. No luck. Not even a whiff of it. I'm convinced at this point that not even a bloodhound could have found it.

So ... I've fallen back on one of the poems from my first collection ... Chance of Rain ... Oh, that sounds so much like ancient history now, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, the poem:

MORNING MIST

Invisible morning mist explores my face
like cotton candy melting at the touch,
reviving memories of that sweet softness

as droplets seek my eyes and slip inside
unseen. But there in the swirling distance,
there against the trees where it bivouacs,

ready to invade in ever growing numbers,
there against a sagging barn, there against
the dim, straining headlights of a silent,

bouncing car peering back at me, and here,
high above me in the drenched, dripping
leaves of a hickory giving what shelter

it can, the mist makes itself visible.
Such workings must be meant to conceal,
but what? The past which clings to me

like the smell of smoke? Or the future,
lost somewhere in the effervescing spell
that embraces these hills, their valleys?

Knowing mystical mist steals the vapors
of my breath and returns only a silence
that swarms about like tiny ghostly gnats

touching my ears and dancing on ahead, 
ever ahead, seeming to point the way
I should take as I labor back up the hill.

© 2003

(from my first collection, Chance of Rain)

Today's word: gnats