Winter Fog & Other Poems

By Adam Sedia

Featured in New Lyre - Winter 2021

Winter Fog 

In bleak December’s midnight chill, 
The fog hangs heavy, damp, and still— 
  Heavy, like a cloak of lead; 
  Damp, like the cold sweat of dread; 
  Still, like cities of the dead. 

Far away, a lonesome light 
Lit in night’s and winter’s spite 
  Throws its beams, which, struggling, go 
  Through the shroud and only show 
  As a muted, spectral glow 

That hesitatingly displays, 
Tall phantoms hiding in the haze: 
  A vast, skeletal brigade, 
  Gaunt and naked, gnarled and splayed— 
  Shorn of their luxuriant shade. 

A lonely, drowsed insomniac 
Who wandered off the well-trod track, 
  Cringed with icy dread to see 
  That weird, fog-swathed mystery, 
  Fearing what the shapes could be,