Veil

In this low place between mountains fog settles with the dark of evening. Every year it takes some of those we love—a car full of teenagers on the way home from a dance, or a father on his way to the paper mill, nightshift the only opening. Each morning, up on the ridge, the sun lifts this veil, sees what night has accomplished. The water on our window- screens disappears slowly, gradually, like grief. The heat of the day carries water from the river back up into the sky, and where the fog is heaviest and stays longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves on trees, the flowers that grow the fullest.