Santosh Bakaya writes

THE FOG
PART ONE
1

All around me there was an impenetrable fog. 

I peered around absently, sitting on a mammoth log. 

Oblivious to the intimidating fog, the river roared.  

From its repertoire of music, scary notes it poured.   

Gingerly, I walked over to the stone-littered shore  

Trying to read a message in the ominous roar. 

The thick fog whimsically swayed and shifted. 

Birds, like snowflakes, through the fog drifted. 

Soon the day turned into a dark and dreary night 

Reducing me to a whimpering and shivering sight. 

The owls started hooting, and the bats blindly flew. 

My thoughts were noiseless ghosts having no clue.  

Some blurry outlines loomed near for a moment 

And vanished as though on some mission urgent.   

Like some winged monsters they hovered around 

And my head started spinning round and round.

The fog thickened in one place, thinned in another.

The roaring waves, my heart beats tried to smother. 

Amid the trees there was frenetic scurrying about.  

Were the hares and hounds having a violent bout?

Hysterical echoes, now advancing, now retreating,  

Resounded in the fog, as if in some ghostly greeting.  

Who was it singing some old and sad number? 

Ah, I started feeling number and still number.

In the undulating wilderness, weeping willows sang ,

And the other trees into the night went bang, bang.  

Was it a throng of ghosts filled with malicious glee? 

I was reassured, in the fog they could not see me.

 

Mountain Fog -- Dawn Waters Baker