Outside a country cottage,
where the road trails off like a song,
and the paint of its pebble-dash walls
play off the sky's complexion,
your indifferent eyes behold
the curdling clouds above
and scrutinize the strangers under them;
the expectations met like
a faulty firework firmly
mounted in the Earth.

In the garden stands
a Spaniard perplexed
by the novelty of fog
stranded on the hillside
and the absurdness of it
existing outside of a horror movie.
In the course of
a near imperceptible drizzle,
it seemed that the clouds
forgot how to float;
At other times, elsewhere, a refusal
to be so gentle,
to became fused with other things,
to be born from
the seepage of smoke
of more than a million chimneys,
some slink home through it
holding hand-cranked lamps,
others: smaller, older,
wrapped in white sheets,
cough up a whole city.

But we are not there,
we are outside this worn-out cottage,
where all the white cats have blue eyes,
where a bike rests and rusts on an oak tree,
where incredibility is murmured  
in hushed tones of veiled dialect,
where the conversation tapers off
like a half-learned hymn.

We amble on in.