Seafog

Seafog is a different matter.

It takes a strong wind
To drive it away offshore,
Across the pebblestone beaches.

Mist is weak by comparison.
Sun burns it to nothing in a morning.

So the day began, dead in the water.

Rolling from the sea-lanes
Far to the west, fog arrived,
Slid up the beach and rubbed itself
Over the fallen rocks before climbing
To curl over the high cliff edge
And into the green grazing
Where the grey sheep were.

There for the duration:
Damp and its blurring silence,
Headland and stack
Shadows in its clouds,
Brooding ominous shapes
In the clinging wet
Of what otherwise
Would be rain.

From the sea
A listless wind rose
In tired eddies
Uselessly stirring the fog
Over the waves to drift it
Lank and sullen on the shore.

And the sea, heaving
Rose and fell like an afterthought
Time and tide imperceptibly
Shifting like the moist sea air.

Every sound came gagged and muffled
Like murmuring unwelcome spirits
In caves and gullies.

Out of the fogbank, as if carried
On its fine haze of water
Horns and sirens pleaded for direction
Ships and grieving sailors
Calling for an echo of land
Lost and wallowing
Choking back fearfulness
In the blind white ocean.

Drowning in it.
Ghosts already.

© BH, 2017

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I found a handful of lines in an old file. Chopped them up and let them grow. Then I skimmed the surface and harvested the poem they became. Poetry in a petri dish. 

Here it is. A memory contained, of shores from my youth, land- and seascapes. I can still recall the weight of dense fog on those old shores: such surprisingly light pressure on heart and soul, but still capable of leaving me breathless and lost.