Tag Archives: fog

Ritual

December 10, 2021ache, Christian living, life on the foreign fieldache, break, fog, hope, hunger, morning, Poetry, Thailandinsearchofabrook

Each morning breaks the same,

Rising with a hunger that carves

Like the slanting fingers of sunlight cutting

Through the fog that shrouds the neighbor’s burnt field.

Through the night, the fog settled deep in the valley

Bleeding dew on the fire-scorched ground;

I reach for coffee, two spoonfuls in the filter

Watch while the black liquid drips into the waiting cup;

The scalding brew stirs the restless throb

I trace the words that tremble on the page and pen the ache–

Read this my Lord— this hunger, this hollowness,

This burnt ground, this empty cup, my song to You.

Remember

November 15, 2018ache, home, Poetry, this college lifefog, loneliness, memories, mountains, nature, Poetry, simplicity, snowinsearchofabrook

I live in a world where vehicles crowd

Each other in unending race;

Streetlights outshine the stars at night

And smog smothers the young moon’s face;

The air is heavy with the scent of fumes

Even at night the din rarely dies;

Yet I find my way in this rush of life

Where myriads of sound from the city rise.

And sometimes they ask me, do you remember

The elms in the winter night?

The falling of snowflakes in the muffled dusk

And the way they dance in the light?

Or the way the mountains look in the rain

When cat-footed and gray comes the mist,

And one by one the lights blink on

Solitary beacons, alone, fog-kissed.

No, I have not forgotten, and the memory

Comes quick and gold and keen,

And I know when wind shakes the elms with snow

For I feel a stirring, a glad unseen;

And when the mist comes creeping up the mountainside

And the lights gleam on, a pain,

A beautiful pain, chokes, and I can forget

Only as the wind can forget the rain.

October 3 (for Creative Writing class)

featured photo credit: pixabay.com

Dusk: Doi Sutthep

July 9, 2017life on the foreign field, Poetrybeauty, Chiang Mai, Doi Sutthep, fog, mountains, Poetry, raininsearchofabrook

Below is a poem set to the same style as Sara Teasdale’s Sunset: St. Louis

Hushed in the still gray fog of July rains

When humanity teems below in wild chatter

How many times have I seen my eastern mountain

Dream by her city.

High and still, shrouded in fathomless mist

That feints and flickers in a fickle ballet

Beneath muted sky she stands silent and strong

In lengthening shadows.

And when the light from the western sun breaks through

In soldered bars of gold and bronzed creation

Striking the clouds, my mountain still stands shining

In green and gold glory.

But I love my mountain most in rainy haze

When the gray rains come furtive and silent at dusk

And the lights blink on, gleaming through mist as my mountain strong

Dreams by her city.

-July 2017

Fog

June 4, 2017ache, Adventurebeauty, Chiang Mai, delight, Doi Pui, fog, restinsearchofabrook

Suddenly I plunged into it. Up and upward I climbed, deeper into the heart of the mist. The echo of the Chinese tourists’ jabber faded and nothing remained but the winding road, the forest and the fog. I was alone in the world. Curve after curve we went, the fickle fog wisping in the hollows and around the mossy tree trunks, now fleeing in fear, now advancing recklessly, reaching around my hands, my neck, my arms, chilling me with welcome numbness. We climbed up and then bounced down, my motorbike and I, through rutted tracks and mud, deeper and deeper into this alien world. When I stopped at the lookout to pull my camera from my backpack and turned off my bike, the silence hit me with a shout. Only the wind spoke its emptiness in the treetops, like a December breeze in a muffled midnight snow. Beneath me the fog rolled out in an fathomless ocean. I thrilled. I was alone in a world of fog. Alone.