A Fine Mist
May 20 2014


A fine mist.
More insubstantial than fog,
which curtains from thick to thin
rolling-in
in great enveloping waves,
as impatient
as a fidgety child.

While this mist is still,
an even softening
with its own internal light.

Dilute pastels, a muted wash,
and dense air, blotting up
like thick absorbent paper.
A watercolour world,
that seems primordial
eternal
reassuringly small.

I am in a snow globe.
Its hermetic dome
containing light,
its meticulously rendered scene
too still to be real.
If it weren't for the eaves-trough
steadily dripping
time would seem infinite,
the visible world
preternaturally fixed.

 You would not think of cats' feet or a cloak of invisibility with this mist. Because it's not as kinetic as fog, nor as thick. It is fine-grained and still, like a Japanese watercolour. The light is uncannily even, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Time seems arrested, and the world an exquisitely rendered miniature, small and fixed. 

I think there are enough allusions to colour and light in this poem that it qualifies for at least honorary entry in my on-again/off-again "colour" series.