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The Sound of Fog
Cezanne Alexander

Early one December morning, fog
blown in from the Pacific
crashed into the aboreal riprap—
a coastal forest of cedar and fir.
The rush of droplets pounded boughs and needles,
a micro timpani, incessant drumbeats, static timbre.

I’ve known fog:
river fog which blankets valleys,
freezing fog round a mountain peak,
autumn’s chill on a summer lake, and this wintery brume.
I’ve been sunburned in fog, lost in fog, made love in fog,
but I had never heard fog.

At the edge of the woods I
played my beam into the mist.
Droplets bright blinded my light and
reduced my vision to a halo of swirling white.
Back in darkness, the noise was
louder than a whisper, closer to a roar.

Doubt muffled the joy,
shattered the wonder. Can one hear fog?
Deconstructing, I listened.
I heard a duet of owls, a knot of frogs,
the clang of the channel buoy and the blast of a fog horn.
All this wrapped in a rushing, whooshing sound,
like pebbles rolling after retreating waves.

Could it be tires on a wet road,
the churning motor of a passing ship,
breaking surf, my own tinnitus?
I clasped my wool hat over my ears and opened my mouth.

—
Cezanne Alexander is a writer living between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic rainforest. She is the winner of the Musepaper Story Prize.

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