Fog Sonnet
January 2013

I wanted to walk around, hide in it.
I wanted to think I was somewhere else.
We saw it from our car as we crossed the
Ohio. It encroached the big old steam-
boats as they hugged the shore. The pines that lined 
the waterfront paths poked through like emerald 
church steeples. You could only see the tops 
of things. The whole city was caught between 
two grey skies; sudden symmetry. This must 
be life in the Pacific Northwest. My 
friend, who was driving, doesn’t like to walk. 
He pulled the car up to the water’s edge. 
Without any question, it crept over
the hood, then the roof. Then we disappeared.

Fort Myers Beach, 2006-----            1.25.2013

From everything you hear growing up, you’d think the ocean was this touchable and playful thing like a puppy or a field of sunflowers. Instead, you walk up to it, and it just lays out in front of you, pulsating like the Earth’s heart. Or on bad days, like a giant dying. So you step a little closer, suspiciously, until it’s tickling your toes. Then you think, maybe it’s shy. You let the whole thing hug you but its hug is vast and dark and greener than you ever imagined. It’s warm and cold at the same time. When you consider that you are nothing but a drop in its volume, you realize it is the scariest hug you ever received.