Evanescent by Jefferson Hansen

writing out of the despair

of touching something so

evanescent as to slide away

from the cracked skin of fingers

writing nothing at all

not the steeple pointing

toward the grey clouds not

the way your smile sets

people off spinning through time

not of the salt in cheese

unable to write the fog of the bay

on the verge of coming ashore

unable to write of the memory

of driving in fog, age 16,

to hear the jazz most wanted

unable to write of the sun burning

out the fog on a cool morning

it is impossible to write a right

way about anything

this is a series of tangents

without a circle to moor them

sent over and under the wire

of communication itself barely

discernible because the fog

encroaches and the sun is a loss

for poetry only hints at clarity

sometimes the wispy shadows

are the closest we can come

to writing on and in

the fog as the place of poetry

the page hovering away from us

not itself the site but more

the medium like fog itself

evanescent and brief like all

we write on the pulp of trees

or the lithium of batteries like

the slow ebb of the fog on

an autumn morning

all connected by a chain of likes

we write off the fog

of paper or a computer monitor

what it is that gives us a hesitation

enough to show something is

and is not at one and the same time

writing will all decay even Homer

could life be a hesitation between the

closed eyes of the infant and the closed

eyes of the corpse  and in between

is the fog waiting heavy

for the writing on its soft surface

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Jefferson Hansen runs this blog. He is the author of ...and beefheart saved craig and Cruelty, both published by BlazeVOX.