The weather has captivated us for centuries.
There have been many songs and poems written about the weather. Following a column I wrote about fog, I received this lovely email from David Benjamin:
“One of my late aunts wrote poetry and her very best piece (in my opinion) is called ‘Fog.’ Another late aunt was an elementary school teacher at Frobisher Bay back when it was called that, and when she came home to Nova Scotia’s South Shore she would always say the most memorable line: ‘I love the air here; it is so huggable!’”
At my window on the hill
I pull the fog
Up around me like a shawl
and listen....
The air touches gently. It's spring.
The far-away sounds near.
Things near have disappeared.
I’m the only visible being
on the grey and shrunken earth.
The ghost of a fearful thought
drifts back to me from childhood:
“What if I’m the only person alive
and I’m just imagining everyone else?”
But the sounds are still there. I can hear
the long low moan of a long low tanker.
The forlorn groan of a faint foghorn.
High-pitched, insistent, a train whistle
A hammer persistent on the head of a nail.
From a tree nearby bubbling notes - a robin.
The questioning cry of a lone gull.
I’d watched the seduction as fog’s fingers curled
round ship superstructure and city high-rise,
seen it lay moistly on City Hall, citadel,
dim time and history on a garrison clock.
But now, gone city,
gone suburbs and shoreline, a whole cold ocean.
Gone all creation as though gravity had given up,
let everything without trace slide off and into
dark timeless space;
as though the sounds that I’d heard were really mere echoes
of the smothered, the suddenly dead.
My soul feels damp.
Fog-shawl, distant essence, both grow heavy, compelling.
I lean toward the silence, feel myself falling....
The poem is called ‘Fog’ and was written by David’s aunt Margaret Benjamin Hammer. You can find it, and others, in her book of poetry called ‘Dim Time and History on a Garrison Clock.’
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Cindy Day is the chief meteorologist for SaltWire Network
