Fog

Today the park held a six-foot deep lake of fog, white and soft and glowing. The sun, rising in the east among the trees dipped oars of light into the pond of fog. I saw the sun glowing in the mist from 2 blocks away, starting my walk to the park. When I got there the shadows lay long across the grass like journey markers; my own shadow across the street with the sun over my shoulder. It rippled and flapped like a skinny black flag, slinking along the curb and fence, no sound but a trace of my passing.

This fog belonged to the park. It's moist, golden grass and soil had given it up like warm breath to the cool air. The slopes held it, a valley fog in a small valley. It had grown during the night, white and silent under the windless stars. It waited for the morning, pale, moonlit, quiet.

Come the sun, the fog, lit up, like a white rainbow with blue and orange tints. Once or twice I stopped just to watch the quivering fog shadows of the trees against the mist, dark and long and the glow around the trunks. I felt tall and bouyant, like a ship. No wind stirred the leaves or moved the fog, and it lay there, warming, thinning, as I went around the track. A swell of air pushed some fog up over the track on the south, shaded side. Fog spilled like the pillow a sleeper would push almost off the bed. Sneaking off into the dark.

After one jogging lap I walked a lap, enjoying being surrounded by the humid light, glistening leaves of trees, dark orange, deep brown and green, the sky clear and pale. I passed an earnest couple with smiles on their faces, walking in that animated walk/run that people do. Paths crossing. Still, I couldn't take my eyes off the still, floating white vapor that lay in the park, and that I surrounded. Looking across it to the west I saw a broad band of white, then green and russet, then blue with the moon, sharp and white hanging in the sky.

I couldn't wait to cut across, walk through it, breath it, and taste it. Heading east, with the sun off to the right, I dipped into the quiet mist, surrounded by light, ready to loose my way in the fog. It felt cool on my legs. At the other side, when I came out, I looked back to see if I had left a path. No path. No trace. The sun helping me out by melting the air, warming and evaporating. I turned my back on it before it disappeared.