The Winter Fog

image © the author

The hillside now is burnished gold;
The lines of oak along its rim
And sweeping down its sides are dim
Because the morning has unrolled
The drifting fog. Just overhead
Lie clouds whose quiet fingers meet
The treetops hand to hand; they greet
The day together — gray and red
And gold and brown — all colors rich
But quiet as the rains begin;
The daylight’s dusk drifts silent in
The noonday, over road and ditch
And hill to float against my face —
The feathered fog, the raindrops cold,
The winter’s presence, careless, bold;
I shiver in the fog’s embrace,
But like the trees, my fingers reach
To find the clouds; they meet and brush;
My silence echoes still its hush
Now face to face, and each to each.