And then you wake up one morning to the fog

surrounding your house like a heaven,

like the first time you drank a whole bottle

of white wine alone. You get dressed for your walk

down the path you walk on each day.

You look to the horizon, the shouting

sun now more like moon’s soft hum. One muted tone

behind sky’s veil. You notice the lichen-

covered stones greeting each step, the geometry

of downed limbs scratching at low tide,

the snowy egret you surprise, plumed head

turned on its side, sweeping the mudflats, improvising

a way to catch breakfast in suffused light—

all of this and more, normally hidden in plain sight.

But an orchestra’s warming up behind the curtain:

commuters leaning on shrill horns, distant

sirens rising, the engines of this world

revving up their clear intent to perform

something short of a miracle. O fog

of morning, hover in the hollows of this day,

remain in its low places, to rise up again

when we need not more, but less.

(Winner of the twelfth annual Littoral Press Broadside Contest, fall 2019)