I’m painting my love in autumn colors.
I’m painting the flame of leaves underfoot,
The greyish sky, rainy and foggy.
The crying love is a natural mood.

Boarded benches are in the park
Under the shade of naked trees.
And fog is ahead, lots of fog.
My love is hidden in it indeed.

Behind the fog my love is flowing
Inexorably, irrevocably like a water.
It’s running off to nowhere away,
Without a trace forever in autumn.

Palace in night fog
draped in a pale vestal sheen —
Moonlit débutante

In the night of purple murky clouds
that fell from heaven, a heavy haze
envelops the old palace, a velvet shroud
that blinds all but the keenest gaze.

Yet there atop the palace gates,
a spotlight sends out golden blades
to slice the velvet and spite its weight:
gleaming swords by brighter spirits made —

A signal to the clouds, return up high,
cast off their shroud and kiss the sky.

In creeping fog
of wintry night:
My eyes are clogged.
Billows of blight.

Dull cataracts
veil antique lamps,
gun cotton tracks,
pale wreaths of damp.

Yet though here loom
dun brooding hulks
of cold stone gloom
in misty sulk

the lamps shine forth
and shall not fail
’til dark fades north
and pulls the veil.

And then the night comes –
she smells of fog
and secrets,
with stars looking down from above
and remaining silent.

I pull the curtain

open, just to stall for time,


and study the fog.

...what half freaked me out was, having been mulling the first line, the thing itself overtook me like it was some wrestling match.


(sonnet #MMMMMMMMCMXLII)


Fog manifests itself in headlights, hale
White haunting lo, the black night til, what hence?
How mists oertake aught trying for passage, dense
Naught blotting out the distance like no bail
Exists, until I canna help, nor fail
To thus reduce speed as "password?!" thence
Seems now demanded, so I pray, defense
But Thee alone, oh LORD, Whom shall avail.
If fear was what they wanted, I'd as t'were
A start of it, recalling folk complaining too
Oer its keen essence blocking travel, poor
As mulling how I cherished it, t'would do
Me in now, in a trice, if only. Stir
Vague mem'ries of its courtship like, what's true?

27Oct24a

Fog and mist rising,
And then disappearing behind the peaks.
Fog and mist rising
From the lake as if
The water itself is burning beneath its lurky surface.
Fog and mist rising and dissolving into the meadows,
Painting the grassland in grey and white.
Fog and mist rising and nestling in the deodars,
Reflecting the icy surface of the water in its vapour.
Fog and mist rises higher and higher than the mountain peaks as if teasing the ***** of the hill.
Fog and mist rising and tainting the hillside until nothing is visible,
Not even the roads in haunted small towns.
Fog and mist rising from nowhere and covering the hills
In blue and grey and white.
Fog and mist rising like an old curse after the rainfall dances.
Fog and mist rising and then disappearing
behind the peaks,
Where there is only the open sky.

Crow’s caw,
Wind’s whisper.
The muted bell
In the old church tower.

Moon’s rise,
Clouds veiling.
Distant voices
Chant in unison.

Night’s chill,
Breath clouding.
Feet tread softly
On leaves’ rust carpet.

Robed wraiths.
Faces masked.
Dread creeps o’er me
As they pass me by.

Now silence,
Air so still.
All sight shrouded
By a mist’s embrace.