under the fog

By: Jason Hackett

The morning fog buried the

the town, even the sun 

could not trespass upon

the thickness of its dying.

Damp wood 

– pine, cedar, poplar –

peeled off the bones of

broken buildings

a petrichor as godly sweet

as 

the moment Mother Nature

first set foot in this valley,

and graced its hills with her beauty, 

before we had to live

with our consequences,

and were glad to hide faces

under the curtain of what we had done.

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Jason Hackett is a small business owner, father of four and sleep deprived. His poems can be found in The Journal of American Poetry, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, Cholla Needles, Crack the Spine, Mental Papercuts, Blue River Review and Sky Island Journal.

"Fog is the cloudy cataract – the blind spot – that prevents us from seeing what is really there, especially when the truth is not pleasant to look at. I once saw a picture of a thick fog covering an old abandoned mining town. It was as if Mother Nature was trying to hide a scar she was ashamed of."