Thoughts: December City Fog

What do people look at when they think?
Not the middle distance, surely,
but some carefully allotted neutral plot,
a space that eyes can colonize. On subway
rides, this sometimes means comparing
sizes of the fonts in advertisements,
focusing on “take the next express to your

success,” or contemplating artificial teeth:
posters for cosmetic dentistry can offer
some release. The mind therein can softly
spin: thoughts corralled like lambs beyond
the brink of whose enclosure wolves are known
to roam. One thinks within the confines of
what one can temporarily inhabit like a home.

Sometimes my thoughts, like poems, fill
with talk, sometimes they’re mostly gawk.
Sometimes they ride around as if delighted
with so many ways of making sound.
Sometimes they scrabble for minutiae in
the sand, or babble like a baby with
a sea-shell in his hand. Today my thoughts

arise like New York City buildings into fog:
they start like edifices ought to start,
foundations seem quite sure and planted:
but are soon supplanted by translucent air:
a kind of gentle sway of nothing-there: a sort
of amicable house arrest. I like these thoughts
the best. They take their time, and bless.


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