Poem #25 for Poetry Month-Japanese Somonka

Last night at the 2230 weathers, I saw a large ship on the horizon bedecked with lights. A cruise ship repositioning for the Alaska run? One of the elegant dark blue Alaska State ferries, the one which makes the journey to Seattle? Does it run at this time of year? So many questions...yet so little time to gather the data. I hustled my bustle to the radio room.

The sky was bedecked too, with a fine half-moon and many stars and Venus blazing love on her subjects but there was a blurred quality to it and the pervasive smell, not unpleasant, of wood smoke. The wind was light, barely there, whiffing in nonchalantly from the east, over the narrow Esowista Peninsula. I deduced the cause of the blurry atmosphere as campfires on Chesterman Beach, just enough of them with the wind coming from the right direction to helpfully blow smoke across the channel to our island. 

This got me thinking about fog. Summer fog. Fogust. I dug out this somonka from my Poetry File and hoped for just one more sunny day. The somonka form is comprised of two stanzas with the a syllable count of 5 7 7 7 7, unrhymed, non-metrical and typically (I disobeyed) the first stanza is a query/address from one lover to the other with the second stanza being the reply from the addressee. I guess I was addressing the Fog and reconciling myself to it versus getting all mushy and having a conversation with it!

Photo was taken at mid-day from the Estevan Point light tower (the highest on the BC coast) looking toward the radio room, workshops and the crew house, the Eagle's Nest, up on the hill. Visibility was approximately 1/8 mile in fog that August day.

One Fog Sedoka

Yes, my head is clear

while fog drifts about vaguely

doleful, sighing here and there.

I’ve learned to welcome

fog, let wind-stirred fog drops kiss

my upturned face, sweet water.