A pall of fog on a still-frozen
marsh. Plates of month-old
sequestered ice, stacked like
mismatched puzzle pieces,
fleet into the misty obscurity
of seven-o-clock fog.

And where winter passed,
the sporadic pools of saltwater
sleep like shattered glass on
a dirty carpet.

At the shore, anemic paper
birches lean from one another,
by tree stumps whose underground
veins deny their above-ground
fate.

And I, lost in opaque fog
and last traces of an ill-advised
winter.