We sit on the porch in the slow quiet of this morning’s fog, eating strawberries and cereal. In the close grayness of a holiday morning, there are few of the usual sounds. Cars roll by intermittently on Ashland; a neighbor’s early rising grandchildren play in the alley. An orange monarch works the blue blooms of the butterfly bush while a bumblebee lumbers around in its chore of feeding. After our breakfast is over, a green-backed hummingbird whizzes around the feeder, settles for a long drink.

 I take my bowl to the sink and rinse it, walk out the back door.

 A slight breeze ripples the leaves and I hear the sounds of fog falling through the branches. Drops patter against lower leaves, against the spindly branches, onto the ornamental shade plants. I stand and listen for a while, study the spent blooms of hostas, gone from lavender to white and now to a yellowish tinge, fringed with tan. They hang, limp and dewy, sagging toward earth. Red basil stands above the coleus and ferns, backdropped by the trunks of trees and the low green of underbrush.

I contemplate the jumble of hounding thoughts, an agony of tensions, painful decisions with long-term implications, situations that cannot be easily resolved, a recession personalized by Randa’s loss of job, deadlines, frustrations, aggravations.

 Looking back at the bank, toward the neighbor’s house, I see the fog-defined pattern of every web. Microscopic droplets illuminate every fiber. They blanket the wintergreen low on the ground, each strand obvious, the emphatic funnel hole in the center. Patterns hang from low branches, from leaves, flowers. In this quiet hour of surrounding gray, there are things seen more clearly than in the full glare of a clear day.

 I pray for wisdom.

H. Arnett

9/08/09