Before the Fog Lifts

The oak at the end of the lane becomes suggestion, then rumor, then nothing the eye can claim. Distance closes like a held breath. You walk into it anyway, your breath joining its argument. The wet air tastes of iron and stone. Birdsong arrives without birds. What you thought was near turns out to be further than days. What you thought was finished still turns in the cold, still deliberates. By noon the thin sun finds its way through the field and the oak returns— ordinary and improbable as anything given back to you.