"Infinitesimal
star,
you seemed
forever
buried
in metal, hidden,
your diabolic
fire"    – Neruda, from "Ode to the Atom"






Ode to Fog


Where do you come from
my foolish friend,
taking over
at night, when no one is looking,
the rolling lips
of the coming green
of valley
and the poor buds
just now seeing outside
of the tips of their limbs?
I never see you coming.
I am sent happy
all day by the showers
of sunlight
that serenade the gentians
purple beautiful
earth snakes that rise
like cobras,
as do I and all the others,
and the river
now passes by in its velvets,
the robin
spins its eyes
to the passers by,
for it is spring, alive!
And yet like an army
of darkness you come,
such evil in the sky.
I wonder if love
is night,
where the wanderings
of the light
fade into the soil
where seeds only tingle
and agitate?
Only you would know
such things,
fog,
thief of stars,
thief of planets,
thief of our understandings
of the past,
for I see fog
too in distant mornings
for the farmers
of the worlds of the past.
May wind
will blow you away,
as the earth shifts
in its subtle
seed
of blazing darkness