FOG
Driving through desolate desert streets
the melancholic tune of an old song cracks on the radio.
stopped at a red light,
I watch what surrounds me.
Haggard faces on battered roads
and always the omnipresent
pigeons, constant reminders that life is real, they flap their wings, unconcerned,
dancing through the smoky steam filled spaces.
The fog, insidious, snakes its way through back alleys and forsaken parks that seem like still lives in Seurat’s paintings. Fragments of lives, like little unconnected dots
and always these battered souls
aimlessly walking with nowhere to go.
no tears are shed
no words are spoken
and then in all of this noxious world of darkness and cold
the flicker of a light when a helping hand is outreached
an old lady huddles under the umbrella of someone she doesn’t know
a window rolls down and coins are tossed in a battered cup, soiled and dirty
like the imprints of a life that endures
all this in the fragment of a few minutes in the foggy city where I can’t find my place.
I close my eyes and see where it is that I belong
along the coast
overlooking that similar body of water, but half way across the world
where the rugged coastline greets me with open arms
where the gravel under my shoes reminds me that I am home as I walk up the lane
the smell of oak burning in the fireplace
the fog horn reminds me of that foggy city far far away
Sarah Francheteau-Berman
work in progress
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