TWO FOGGED-IN FRIENDS WITH DIFFERING ATTITUDES

“Damn, when will this fog bank lift
so we can see something,
the Lighthouse perhaps,
which I know is up there on that hill,
which I can’t see  either,
or at least the cupola on the Island Inn
or the boats bobbing in the harbor?”

“Look! Five minutes ago
even those trees fifty yards away
were ghosts in the grayness.
Now see the layers–
the trees in the foreground,
dark and almost defined,
then the ash gray haze of the forest’s edge,
fading to near-blizzard white
until the trees turn into mist.”

“How poetic!”
But it doesn’t change the matter at hand–
that it’s all…just…gray,
and our boat leaves in an hour — if we find it,
and I’ve barely touched any paints on my palette
except black and white
with a soupcon of green
for three days now, approaching four.”

“My only regret, sitting here, looking out
enveloped and blanketed so thoroughly
all these days
that we thought would be a wealth of vistas,
is that I never learned
how to mimic the movement of low ground fog
rolling across the water and sifting through the trees.”

Matt Kiell