The mist outside always loiters
Never coming near
I sometimes see what it hides
At times it doesn't always oblige
Silhouettes of things that be
Bodies of things, actually
I cup my coffee and ponder
Over rim, over aroma
And cock an eye over yonder
Lest the mist behaves even stranger
Do I have that 'misty eye', I wonder
To see more than what reality panders
But to me the mist does sing and talk
Or at least to me it pantomimes and walks
Telling me, I would imagine, the history
Of the hills and their former glory
Coz when the woodsmen come with axe
Kill kill they will with unflinching reflex
Empty the land of what once was
To build what earnings and profits gross
So perhaps this mist is billowing mad
In haste to tell stories of a dying past
Or is it slow and weighty
Depressed by an apparent reality
That the axemen might come soon
Scatter all that sing and croon
That wake and live and baby
Under that blanket green and dewey
I take my notebook and trusty pen
And start to note the mist, its rends
For there is a lament in there somewhere
Often blinded out by the sun's glare
A beautiful dawn it always is
A false dawn it appears to be
For if I am not 'misty eyed' and true
I will let the forapers kill and rue
Whatever I could have acted and done
To preserve the birds, the trees, the downs
For when they are leveled and gone
So too my mist friend and her pantomimed songs
- by TC Lai
