The mist in the mountains looks like
a light cloak of smoke
except it doesn't rise straight up
but rolls round and round
as if it's aroused by its own sea-smell,
its own stink.

In these parts there's no panic, no noise.
so I guess in a way it doesn't look like smoke at all.

No leaves are charred. People move slowly,
moss gathers.

More than anything, it looks like the water,
the part where the river joins its nimble body
to the wide, wide ocean, where
everything turns and turns, falling, rising, flying.

*Written May 2012