“Walking in Fog”

Listen to Barry Goldensohn read this poem. Everything looms at me. Hound’s-tongue with wet doggy leaves and blue flowers starts up from the mist-streaked hillside. Standing by itself, framed in fog the live oak twists black arms above me, an embrace, free of the crown of leaves that hides the outlines of limbs in the crowded background view. The canyon and the next hill disappear. An owl on a low branch sits in its silhouette in the white flame of a wild cherry and a tiny wren weaves through the sagebrush, singing as it stops then flashes back in. Plunging into dense puffs and gusts of fog along the road a dying friend wheels and lunges from cliff wall to cliff edge in a bright yellow blouse and blue jeans joyous with losing herself and coming back in daily magic, you see me then you don’t.