The fog is a white dress
slipping off the breast of a hillside,
but nothing turns naked,
nothing is exposed, and rows
of headlights in the oncoming traffic
permit me to worry
about collisions of any sort.
I want to walk into the gray mist like a vowel
walking into the surface of a newspaper,
lost in the facts, the folds,
the fiesta of patterns, howling my headlines,
never to be recognized again.

If beauty were a sport,
the countryside at this early hour
is primetime, and
with or without the limelight
of early autumn-
holds the most spectators,
the largest fan base
this side of the Appalachians.

The sun is a hot coal
of indecision,
unable to determine
whether to jump or drop
from the suspended magma
of morning sky
hot with light.

I am right next to you
but you don�t see me.



�2005 by Paul Adrian Mabelis