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Mist
This was later reworked into another poem,
Mist rivers. I can't just now decide
which of them I like the better.
This is a day of mist. I watched
from my window yesterday to see
airborne rivers flow between
the hills down over the pastures,
to hesitate and hold over the line
of the unseen river and the quiet
railway track. As the light faded
it seemed as if the landscape
were flooded with a milky escape.
During the night it had cooled
further and reached a level such
that this morning only single trees
were showing above it, and
they were beaded and bowed.
As I walked down to the field a
misty silence closed about me;
I felt I was walking into the sea
and my passage along the footpath
seemed mapped by a swirling trail.
Above me I knew the sun sailed
golden in a higher sky but my eyes
were walled and ceilinged in this grey world.
The afternoon saw most of it gone,
boiled away, and the grass and trees
shook off their jewelled covering for
a while. But now, sun sinking, the
rivers are flowing again and the view
from my window is closing in.
April 1, 1998
Somerset
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