NOVEMBER 2018 • NEBRASKAland 39
Fog
The fog comes as a surprise, forms in silence
overnight, so when you part the curtain
a white blur muffles the known world.
Moving through, no escape, every last
green leaf dotted silver, last night's
moisture glistens on grass tips,
until you cross the footbridge and stop:
below is a world that most will miss,
vehicles in a rush to somewhere else,
fifty yards down the creek a heron
poises in shallow water perfectly still,
grassy banks lined with tracks of deer,
on the far side a dozen wild turkeys
cross a mowed clearing one by one
to fence line and then to field to forage,
and overhead, in this ground-cloud, calls
of Canada geese come in for a landing
which you can hear but not yet see,
because this old planet still has a few tricks
in its bag, a monkey wrench or two to make
us pay attention, to slow down, as drivers
do, the whine of tires on pavement muted,
and as you turn back the fog clears, yet
all day you hold this other world close.
(first published in Panoply: A Literary Zine)
All poems copyright ©Twyla M. Hansen
Poems from Rock • Tree • Bird (The Backwaters Press, 2017)
2018 winner, Nebraska Book Award in Poetry, Nebraska Center for the Book
Winner 2018 WILLA Literary Award, Women Writing the West
Used by permission of the author
PHOTO
BY
CHRIS
MASADA
PHOTO
BY
JUSTIN
HAAG
