Fog (metaphor for mystery)

saturates my pores, sends

an ancient message:  attend

 to the moment at hand.

 

I stand inside fog, realize

I am at a border, where past

blurs into memory, and

the future is unknowable.

 

Perhaps this is how refugees

feel—a deep longing tinged

with regret—as they journey

between here and there,

 

no longer where they were,

not yet where they will be.

They are time travelers, wary

and unsettled, mourning

 

what is lost to them, riding

uncertainty on fragile waves

of hope.  Fog whispers this,

reminds me that all of us live

 

our lives along borders—real

and imagined—caught on seams

or inside the space between,

yearning, on the edge of almost.

 

Cynthia J. Lee

Crossing the Border of Almost (24 x 24, Oil, cold wax, pastels on wood panel)