Shrouded

...in my own personal advent.

Driving, my mind wandered much the way the river road bends, slopes, climbs and dissects the thick tangle of woods between home and town. Tires cling to the gray slick ribbon of road, navigated more by memory than by sight. White-washed farm houses perched atop hills with their red-shuttered windows lean slightly forward as I pass, nudging my psyche into awareness that something is missing. I shake myself into the now, realizing the slow-footed river (usually to my right) has vanished under a shroud of fog. So deceivingly dense, it transformed the dark water into a white pristine beach.

Where had my mind wandered? Into the paradoxical thicket?

I cannot taste what I hunger for.
I can only smell what lives in my memory.
Sight is diminishing, yet I yearn to see more clearly.

A mirage on the contemplative landscape is seductive. The familiar crunch and groan of gravel under the weight of the car registers in my ears. I jerk the steering wheel to the left, inches from driving onto the fog bank and being swallowed by the slow-footed dark waters of the Cumberland.