who knows what she does behind the fog it starts just around san francisco muffling skyscrapers, gathering strength, resting patient, languid, heavy until a western wind shoots it across the water and bridge across the water like it was a bridge cuz nothing can stop its force, by land or by sea who knows what she does behind the fog we built our first city in babel to make ourselves a name traded our difference away for the false god of 'one language' traded our difference away for the false idols of Height and Stone lest we be scattered like dust in the wind who knows what she does behind the fog there's a hill in claremont where on a shabbes you can sit and watch as she scrapes an entire city into a canvas erases centuries of stone in seconds leaves anonymity where there was once a name millions of names, thousands of lives, dozens of towers touching the sky gone, like that behind water, and air, and a western wind and who knows what she does *behind that fog* because there's a hill in claremont, where on a shabbes you can sit and look down and there's really nothing but the hill with its exposed roots like arthritic knuckles in the earth cascading down to the treeline and then after that thick white just an impenetrable curtain canvas where there was once a city an unpierced veil drawn by her breath across water like a bridge and behind it, who knows what she's doing (water, softly suspended in air, can hide a lot of magic) maybe when she's done doing what she's doing she'll draw it back and all we'll see is
rematriated forest all
huichin and yelamu a turned-back clock, or an unimaginable future no more arrogance or Stone no more hunger no more landlords, or cops maybe she'll draw it back, and there'll be housing and joy and Bay and not much else dancing in the sunset streets holiness rolling like thunder across the rooftops maybe she'll clean our souls and close my eyes and open them to a world drawn anew maybe, just then, i feel another breath push from the east and so i close my eyes, giddy, and count one, mississi-ppi two, mississi-ppi
three, mississi-ppi before opening them and blink twice to see the fog rolled back far and fast as it came blink twice and the whole goshdarn city is back again blink twice and nothing at all has changed or, at least from this far off, nothing i can tell,
just yet