The Roots of the Fog

Are good to contemplate
In devastating sun
You can only absorb

Sitting sideways, face out,
Torso turned halfway in.
Not even clouds today.

Imagine a small wisp
Slipping into this blue,
A colonist’s recon—

It extends a tendril,
A pallid pseudopod
To touch a peak. Glides on.

The fog there’s just begun.
It niggles a taproot
Into the peak’s thin soil.

That root proceeds, unseen,
Down through the green canyons.
Weeks later, one morning,

A bit of fog blossoms,
Or will. You know it will.
It will spread. It will cling

To the cottonwood trees
Near the end of gold leaves.
The fog will obscure them.

Then you’ll turn to no one
And say, I want to be
Like a cottonwood tree—

Right before my mind goes
Completely, when it’s shed
Half of its memories,

For it to reach that shape,
One architectural,
Colorful afternoon,

Of its greatest beauty.
And then I want the fog
To cloak what falls from me.