Description
by Caryn Leschen
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
—Carl Sandburg
I can wear black clothes in the summertime,
And not be burdened with soft pastels.
I can wear my leather jacket, too,
And tell the tourists to go to, well,
Somewhere warmer if they’re so enthused
With their little beige shorts and their open-toed shoes.
(The tourists look so out-of-sorts
Freezing on Van Ness in shorts.)
Soft-focused photography’s gently diffused
On an August day on the Great Highway—
And on the Fourth of July I can’t see the sky
For the fireworks, so I sit inside,
With dear old friends, and cups of tea
At our barbecue. When the sky’s a stew,
I eat heaps of ribs, hot cobbled fruit,
And can wait ‘til October for my bathing suit.
The fog gives us something to moan aloud.
While elsewhere, sweaty grime and droop
Has everyone wrung-out, my crowd
Swims in a bowl of thick pea soup;
With Sutro Tow’r in a precipitous shroud,
Looking like an alien sloop,
Winking at us with little red lights
we hardly see, by day or night.
Have you ever noticed, while driving home
From a day at the beach, or from San Ramon,
That suddenly you’ve put on the heat
For the Thing That’s Come on Little Cat Feet?
Over the bridge—and put on a sweater,
The wipers on “slow” so you can see better.
I’m back home in the fog and I want to thank it,
And snuggle down under my foggy blanket.
Caryn Leschen is a San Francisco web writer, graphic designer and cartoonist, famous for her nationally-syndicated comic advice column, Ask Aunt Violet. She is also the mother of a bouncing baby 14-year-old boy. For more of her dazzling creativity, go to
www.auntviolet.com
.