Mornings

For the way it removes
the need to know,
the way it replaces
the horizon's hard answer
with the soft question
of what might lie
just beyond
the visible,
which is always
more interesting
than the visible
itself.

The tire tracks
go somewhere.
I don't follow them.
That's the whole practice —
the track that went,
the evidence of going,
and me standing here
not needing to know where,
content with the fact
that something moved
through this fog
before I arrived
and the sand
remembered it
the way sand remembers —
briefly,
honestly,
until the tide
decides otherwise.

The horizon is level.
How is that.
Everything above it uncertain,
everything below it
marked and crossed
and complicated
with the evidence
of lives going in every direction —
and the horizon
just there,
perfectly level,
the one line
that holds regardless,
the counter-action
to every messy
unbalanced
human thing
that happens in front of it.

You can't move it.
You can't tilt it.
It just stays level.

This is either
the most comforting thing in the world
or the most indifferent —
I have decided it is both
and that both
is the point.

Nature doesn't follow rules.
It only reacts.
The fog didn't come
because the temperature asked nicely —
it came because the conditions
were exactly what they were
and nobody had a vote
and nobody needed one.

The beach doesn't know
about the divorce.
The fog doesn't know
about the loneliness.
The horizon doesn't adjust
for the days
when you need it to be closer.
It just holds.
Level.
Regardless.
Offering nothing
except its presence —
which is, on the foggy days,
exactly enough.

The fog doesn't answer.
Neither does the horizon.
Neither do the tracks
going somewhere
I didn't follow —
into the white
that is not empty
but full
of everything
I don't need to know
to feel.

I want to float on the fog.
Not escape into it —
float on it,
the way you lie back
into water
that is cold at first
and then
just water,
just holding,
just the body
given over
to something larger
that doesn't mind.

Later,
when the fog lifts
or doesn't,
a dog will run by.
And I will chase it
into the water
and be a kid again
for exactly
as long as it takes —
which is always
exactly
long enough.

Until then —
the fog,
the level horizon,
the tracks in the sand,
and me,
standing here,
not needing to know,
just feeling it,
all of it,
including the parts
that are cold
at first.