Leave behind the old cold light, indirect, remote, inauthentic, and the
ancient silly church bulletins, hallelujah. You travel alone, a necessary
gesture to the carbonized earth and its irrevocable revenge wish.
Move with your own power, your own impetus, save words—gestures
work better with rivers and lakes; words echo back, often weakly.
Human, all ears, you hear the smallest entities leaping and
quivering—yet a bull-moose thrashes through thickets, you think. But
you can’t see a moose, or any other thing save the sudden fog tickling
your fingertips, its warm grey density surrounding you like destiny.
Here it gets tricky, breathing in gasps, paddling fast—in a cold-necked
panic—for egress from this sketchy dream fugue, this hazy Lethe-
maze—or more horrifying, believing for even a trembling moment
that the rest of it was a dream—that life before the fog, that is.