The Mist I'll Miss

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