Writing 201: Fog

“Day 5 is upon us: clear your foggy mind, embrace absence, and paint with words.”

The poetry prompt for day five of Writing 201 is “fog.”
The form is “elegy.”
The device is “metaphor.”

Being visually oriented I headed straight to my photo archives to give me inspiration for today’s poetry prompt. I had been out taking pictures on a foggy winter’s day a couple of weeks ago. It was fairly clear in some places but quite thick with fog in others. The mountains/hills in the background of the first photo are totally obscured.

Looking north. Sugar Loaf, NY, 2015.

The first words that leaked out of my brain formed a haiku…

Winter’s frozen breath
hangs suspended over snow
whispering, “Hush now.”

Then another poem formed in my mind, but it wasn’t elegy…

Winter’s frozen breath, thick, suspended,
whispers, “Hush now. Sleep.”
Earth’s deep white blanket envelopes all,
Tucked-in tree and leaf.

Finally I came up with something that perhaps resembles elegy with its characteristic sense of loss…

Summer lies smothered by a heavy white quilt,
Her breath suspended frozen and thick.

Awaiting the arrival of spring mournfully
Forced to relinquish all that is past.

Each bud that was born, each flower that had bloomed,
Each leaf, each tender blade of grass,

Relentlessly shivered and silenced, withered, now gone,
Wrenched from Summer’s weakening grasp.

New buds to birth, new flowers to bloom, fresh and unfamiliar,
Forced to embrace all that is new causing fear and apprehension.

 

Although I’m enjoying stretching myself, all of these Writing 201: Poetry challenges confirm that, for me at least, pictures are so much easier than words!