A Quick Fog

Today's fog seems like a soul

caught in a purgatory,
shunned by earth, air, fire,
and water but also of all four.

It rises up out of earth,
tumbles from air, fills itself
with water, and imitates smoke.
Today it rides down from hills

in San Diego, cools the brown
young women in scant bikinis
and the young men trying
to impress them. It blocks

the dropping dun. It wants
to befriend the moon's waves,
which ignore it and pound
the beach. Right before dusk,

the fog lifts, leaves like a hobo
hopping a train to Mexico.

Dr. Fog

Doctor Fog, what might you

prescribe in your inscrutable scrawl
for this gray pall
through which we crawl?

You will say it's all
in our heads. We'll say
But isn't everything?
You'll take the trouble

to scribble, then send us
away. One night, one day,
we'll hear an awful bawl
from a beast atop a wall

and finally we shall fall
down upon the hide of the city
and we shall know enough
not to expect much pity.

Dr. Fog, you know all this,
now don't you? For you have
slithered daily through moist pall--
physician, ah, magician to us all.

hans ostrom 2022

"Gothic Fog," by Hans Ostrom

"Fog," by Langston Hughes

Gothic Fog

He stepped outside
and rubbed the fog,
its pliant hide. What's
inside you? he asked.

No answer. Just muffled
rumblings. Suddenly
a woman's hand emerged,
caressed his cheek and neck.

"Come in," a female voice
said clearly. He entered
the fog. In there, faces floated
like unlit paper lanterns.

A chorus of moans arose.
He turned to escape, but
elsewhere had vanished.
He was inside the fog now.

He moaned.


hans ostrom, 2013

Foggy Couplets

Couplets in the Fog


Fog's a species of weather--
gray, like a pigeon's feather.
Auden once wrote, "Thank you, fog."
Sandburg thought of cat, not dog.
Fog's in Eliot's Unreal City--
yellow fog, what a pity.
Call it mist, call it fog:
Still you tripped over that log.
If you can, take off work.
No sense traveling in that murk.
Anything you try to say
will come out mumbled, foggy gray.
The fog is subtler than the snow.
And so it's the more dangerous foe.



Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom