Visitation
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The way the fog moves in off the lake –nothing like little cat's feet–a rollingall its own, mysterious as a whisperin the dark from a lover, half asleep.
And the way it holds leavesand sky, brushing them, a soft embracethey cannot break free of. They accept.
Sometimes on a warm afternoonfog becomes golden steam,but look now at the way it thins outand then just vanishes,
erasing itself as it slowly risesinto the highest branches upshoreand then out to the distance,
leaving the solid world to go on being itself,as though the fog had neverbent down, knelt, and breathed into it. [End Page 262]
Rod Jellema was a poet and distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, directing the creative writing program there for many decades. In the 1960s and 70s he edited the 32-book-let series, Contemporary Writers in Christian Perspective. He won, among other awards, the Dutch Translation Award from Columbia University, two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Towson University Prize for Literature. His collected poems, Incarnality, was published in 2010; he died in May, 2018. www.rodjellema.com.
