Mist

Sight on the river
Grey on darker grey
banks are silhouettes
framing a wall of white
at unknown distance
The world shrinks
and everything beyond
becomes a void of white.
You never see it -
how could you cut it with a knife?
You cannot touch it -
it fades away from you.
It is the picture of intangible.
It is a colour-hunting amoeba
It pours into valleys
and flows down hills
to escape the sun.
It lives in mountains
and creeps up on
unwary travellers-through-passes.
It sends streamers
like ghosts at night.
The fright of most
who thought it holds
the ghosts of the lost
when they say "Beware
when the mist comes down."

-- Kathryn Andersen