“Consider how the lilies of the field; grow. They do not work.”
Matthew 6: 28
Matthew 6: 28
Consider how well fog becomes Cleveland,
how it hides the houses stripped of humans,
haunted buildings without windows, and
ghosts falling through cracks in factory roofs.
Consider fog ghosts when they moan
over diamond ruined dreams while layers of
soft water cloak the lost Irish Banshee who
groans over the trapped souls of Lake Erie.
Consider how in the past; fog hid dead hacks in
our lake- Pinkerton men who searched for stewards
hidden in the night, sailors who failed to heed
the sandbars and sudden winds.
Consider the old orange crib where laborers
underneath suffocated and died
and there, Garret Morgan trying to use his
new gas mask no one believed would work.
Consider how we older ones miss the foghorn
calling sounds of warning blaring through West Park,
Buckeye, and the lake. And oh, to have had
that warning before our corrupt sandbar years of silence.
Fog can
become frost,
become rime
frozen without
upward movement
but a
cold sense
of time
But sometimes
on warm
July nights,
you can
see fireflies
dance twirl
in patches
of low
white mist,
where when
green life
still blesses
the last
of Cleveland’s
frozen lilies.
Mary C. O'Malley has been published in both print and online. Her latest work, published by The International Centre for Women's Playwrights, is a dramatic monologue.
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