the mist
moved slowly across
the field held down
by stones, stitch of trees
what colour was the mist
x-ray grey
how still was it
the iv drip before it falls…
I stopped the car to watch it cross the field
black earth breathing its winter breath…
the field disappeared in the mist
still the bison stood
life can become so still
the iv drip
before it falls
earth of the body
where a life grows
the stillness between silence
and muteness…
– Anne Michaels, from “Bison” in All We Saw: Poems
Notes: Poem from Whiskey River. Photo: Winter Morning Mist by Sébastien Mamy
Live & Learn 
that unique moment in time, just between –
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Yes. Right there.
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‘X-ray grey’. What a great line.
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So agree. As is the iv drip.
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Black earth breathing it’s winter breath 🌪 👏
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Yes, that line stopped me in my tracks too…
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She captures the ephemeral nature of the mist so beautifully. It’s a misty morning here on the Gulf Coast, so the words are especially resonant.
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She does…and your misty is a wee bit different that ours.
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Truth…
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And as to capturing words, THIS, THIS is so you.
— To write is not to give speech to be seen. The game of common etymology makes of writing a cutting movement, a tear, a crisis.
— This is simply a reminder that the proper tool for writing was also proper for incising: the stylet.
— Yes, but this incisive reminder still evokes a cutting operation, if not a butchery: a kind of violence — the word flesh if found in the family, just as graphy is a scratch. Higher and further back, to write is to curve meet. Writing is the curve that the turn of seeking has already evoked for us and that we find in the bending of reflection.
~ Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (Univ Of Minnesota Press; December 16, 1992)
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OMG, that really, truly sounds and feels like an operation…. skillfully pulling back the skin over the incision, laying bare the essential….
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And you again:
— In each word, all words.
— Yet, speaking, like writing, engages us in a separating movement, an oscillating and vacillating departure.
~ Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (Univ Of Minnesota Press; December 16, 1992)
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Awww, pal, THANK YOU! I am so touched by your kindness. I must confess, writing is my ‘jam’ — makes me happier than most anything I know..unless I’m reading, or looking at art, or spending time with those dearest to me, or, well, what I am trying to say is you have touched my heart….
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Poetry is a language. You either speak poetry or you don’t. Delicate, love it…
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Yes. That’s it. Delicate.
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
Morning mist …. one of my favorite moments in time!! Standing still, quiet, mysterious, spiritual and soothing!!
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MIne too!
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You can’t know this but one of my all-time most faved English words is MIST…. It’s so delicate, so ethereal, so unearthly, and contrary to real fog it’s gone in a moment. It’s there – and now it isn’t….. after maybe one last earthy breath, gone….
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Yes. Me too Kiki.
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That’s a good one.
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That moment before the drop falls,
That image, so perfect
“black earth breathing its winter breath…”
Your readers…
All of it.
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Thanks Dale. Yes. Agree. (And btw, thanks for inviting Claire Fuller over. Wow)
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Thank you for being you!
And most welcome. I’m so glad she went for a visit!
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I liked this
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We had a lot of heavy fog and lighter mist this past week,,,we stood and watched it moving, lower on the hillside between the Firs…we drove up the hill across the ridge and descended slightly down to reach the pass…there was one spot just before we descended where we slowed to look at the view, the fog was tucked in along the river to the north while the rest of the vista from our height was laid open before us…one foggy day last week I was walking back from the car, I stepped into the courtyard and at the intersection with the porch some foggy mist was rolling down off the valley of the roof engulfing me as I stepped up just one step onto the porch…smiling thrilled to be caught up in the misty vapor of life…(ps the foggy vapor mist reminded me of the vapor that would rise out of the Bottle in the tv show I Dream of Jennie, only mind was coming from above downward where Jennie vapor rose)
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Jennie vapor. Love that.
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Anne Michaels, a Canadian is a very accomplished poet and novelist…Many distinguished awards…I read the complete poem via the link and these words also gripped me “you dug breath from your lungs”…as I read her work I wondered about the school of thought that talks of memories embedded deep in our cell from generation of our ancestors DNA, I wondered about her background, environmental as well as heritage…she delves deeply into her research for her writing with such a tenacity that amazes, she invests herself to such a degree that it makes me wonder if she is a long-see-er, I wonder if the Bison is wild or domestic, held in pastureland by fences …” the stillness between silence and muteness” intrigued me as I am slowly reading a novel about a “Mute boy”, ” The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski (gleaned from sharing cupboard tiny library in someone’s front yard near where we walk) and with my own history of being “Mute” for many years… Anne Michaels, Bison poem seems to be rooted in the fertile ground of life, in fallow time, of currents wave of emotions, of grief and of a life-cycle of strength & permanence…
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Loved Edgar Sawtelle.
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/02/interview-anne-michaels
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Thank you.
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Your welcome…and concerning “Edgar Sawtelle” I like the book even -though it is the slowest read I’ve ever experienced…I am at the part where Edgar finds his father on the cement floor of the barn…and the veterinarian Dr. P stops by…did you find it a slow read?
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A wee bit. But I’m ok if enchanted.
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