A poet may take all manner of liberties with words and their meaning—indeed with language itself—yet the pedant purist within me is grappling with the technical difference between “mist” and “fog”—poetically exchangeable but meteorologically distinct.

In “Mist from the Mountains”, I am determined to keep the poem true to the scene that inspired it—one with fog, not mist—meaning that I might forego the working title and certain lines to that end.

This may appear absurd, but somehow to me in this particular work, the detail in question lends to the poem a greater authenticity. There are times when I happily use artistic freedom to achieve a charming line, but “Mist from the Mountains” forbids me.

When my mother was a child, she watched the family’s sheep on the slopes of the Small River Mountains, the very range that inspired the “Mist from the Mountains” sketch. There was formed her fondness of flowers, but also her fear of the fog—as I think the photograph shows, a formidable spectre to behold, especially for a child alone.

Last year, I wrote “Shepherd Girl”, an unfinished sketch commiserating with her on those experiences, but yesterday, as I started exploring “Mist from the Mountains”, I could not help but think—as I always do when confronted with a mist-laden landscape—of her dread of the phenomenon that I (and she too in her way) find so fascinating.

As a result, I composed—to indulge this mental picture—a rough second verse that alludes to the “Shepherd Girl” theme, namely Fear and Awe. Though I am still in the early stages of the sketch’s development, this new verse—should I keep it—would forecast a dramatic change in the poem’s theme and tone¹. Time will tell what transpires.

1. The original one-stanza sketch focuses on the fog itself with Awe as its theme. The “Shepherd Girl” allusion introduces a new dimension that echoes to some extent the theme of “A Rhebok!”.

The two “A Rhebok!” verses are complete, and they are indeed the variations I had initially chosen, enriched by my work on the alternatives. They recount a sighting in late 2017 by my mother and I of the rare Grey Rhebok, a threatened species.

The first stanza describes the scene—the antelope on the hillside—the second, the creature’s reaction upon becoming aware of our presence—a wary and momentary interest followed by a flight to safety, the instant I produced my camera.

I shall, of course, reflect upon the poem in the days to come, but in the meantime, I turn my attention to “Mist from the Mountains”, a sketch composed on the same day as “A Rhebok!”, later in the afternoon when there was a change in the weather.