Beacon in the Murk
We wake to a blanket of fog so thick that for a few bleary moments, time appears to stand still. Peering through the glass, I watch as it swirls, surrounds and seeps into every space and every nook. It’s in the void and the gaps, the shallows and the shadows. It’s above things, under things, between and through things. It’s in the cracks in the walls and the shapes in the brambles.
It hangs low over the millpond, brushing the water and turning bleak. Upstream, it’s wrapped around our favourite tree - its twisted branches now undefined, like tentative first marks in a new sketchbook.
It’s down the lane, through the station and beyond the bridge. In the field, the forest and the farm. It’s in the places we love, and the places we’re yet to find. It’s reached the corner near the park, the red brick terraced houses, finding open doors, gates and half-built porches. It’s flowed through vents and into rooms, up stairs and into attics. Past murmur and mutter, sigh and groan, whisper and cry - everybody’s secrets.
If I didn’t know the time, I couldn’t guess. It’s neither dark nor light, cold nor hot. I get the sense that today’s still deciding what it wants to be.
Out on the road, a single lamppost is yet to realise that morning’s broken. It’s an inland lighthouse, a beacon in the murk.
It’s the same subtle story from every angle; the bank on our side of the river is just a pastel smudge, more air than ground. The one on the other side may no longer even exist.
Remembering a recent walk, I picture the old limes on the hill. Stark from winter, like the great, frail lungs of ancient giants, I imagine them now, gasping for air, consumed by the mist.
Somewhere out there, a ball of gas - one hundred times the size of earth - burns to make all this possible. But today it’s no more than a faint glow - a hint of yellow amidst the white.
A robin, as alive and sprightly as ever, bursts through the haze then lands in the hedgerow. It too must wonder where all the colour has gone. A blackbird joins us - curious what all the fuss is about - but doesn’t stay long. Perhaps she’s seen it all before.
In the middle-distance, the outline of two men exchange silhouetted gossip, like shadow puppets in an opening act. There’s a pointing gesture and a wave - before they both dissolve.
And then, without warning or announcement, something begins to change. Almost imperceptibly at first, lines, shapes, textures and forms are slowly re-emerging. The mill house and the weir, the construction site and the path, the garage and the shop and the leather factory - all are becoming real again. The gloom which so closely concealed and enveloped is finally fading away. I think the world’s returning. And then I see green, and yellow, and blue.