rejectomorph | Fogged

There was fog today for the first time in a long time. It didn't get very thick at my house, but when I went down the hill to go shopping it kept getting thicker and thicker. At Safeway, visibility was only about five hundred feet. That still isn't very thick, but I'll take what I can get. I wish I could have gone farther down the hill. But the thicker fog is coming closer to me now, The pine trees next to the orchard, about three hundred feet away, are mere shades. It's only too bad that they will vanish into the night before they can vanish into the fog.

Sunday Verse

The Opposite of Nostalgia

by Eric Gamalinda

You are running away from everyone
who loves you,
from your family,
from old lovers, from friends.

They run after you with accumulations
of a former life, copper earrings,
plates of noodles, banners
of many lost revolutions.

You love to say the trees are naked now
because it never happens
in your country. This is a mystery
from which you will never

recover. And yes, the trees are naked now,
everything that still breathes in them
lies silent and stark
and waiting. You love October most

of all, how there is no word
for so much splendor.
This, too, is a source
of consolation. Between you and memory

everything is water. Names of the dead,
or saints, or history.
There is a realm in which
—no, forget, it,

it's still too early to make anyone understand.
A man drives a stake
through his own heart
and afterwards the opposite of nostalgia

begins to make sense: he stops raking the leaves
and the leaves take over
and again he has learned
to let go.