Fog

A quick pic taken at 6:44 yesterday morning on my way to work

FOG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

 

-Carl Sandburg 

 

The last few days this fog metaphor poem by Carl Sandburg has come to mind more than once. The landscape has been cloaked in fog for much of each morning. This is a poem drilled into me somewhere in grade school so as the first stanza comes to me still decades later.

 

Smoke bush 'Nordine'  has florescence which seems to capture the dew and pull it from the surrounding air.

The poem seems to better capture the essence of fog even though I understand a lot more about dew points, air currents, jet streams and whatnot than I need to know to appreciate fog.

 

Fog has a visual presence. Spring and fall, it signals change for me. fog also has an innate melancholia.

 

More and more fall reminds me winter is coming to central Wisconsin. The last couple winters have seemed to be without reprieve. Deep, and dark, long and cold, with late cool springs added to the mix. Also, unbidden, fall has become the season of the dark anniversary of my accident, which has left me, it appears, forever changed.

 

Most days, I consider myself fortunate. Fortunate that I do not have constant pain. Fortunate I have good mobility; and with thought, I am fairly capable of anything I choose to do, and fortunate that my accident does not define me more than it does.

 

Still, it has changed the way I garden. When I say "it" I am combining the accident, aging, and even larger issues that we as a world may be getting caught up in forces of climate change which may be beyond any individual's control.

 

And so, we must all adapt. We must adapt our lives, our gardens, and make our places in the world work for us.

 

Fog, seasons, change; lessons learned in the garden.