Fog Point (vodka) was made with water harvested from San Francisco fog.
—Out of the Dark, Greg Hurwitz,
Sloshed on fog, that’s how I’d like to go, drunk
on immortality like something from a poem
by Emily Dickinson, whose last words
were, I must go in, the fog is rising. Wouldn’t I love
to whisper something so specific when I succumb,
then sip fog with Emily in the afterlife, the two of us
on a storm beach cold with rain and sea-fret
passing the bottle, kibitzing about inconsistent use
of capitalization and our leisurely flowering
of consciousness, the awful letting go.
Emily wrote, “Water, is taught by thirst.”
and I’ve always wanted to know, not why
the thirst, but why the comma? I might ask her
if I can see my way clear: fog has a way
of spreading its winding-sheet, obliterating
our life’s words, complaint of rock against wave,
wave against shore. Words that rain, cruel words,
or kind, like the last words spoken to Jesus by a thief.
Words that weigh, like beached whales who smother
themselves under the greasy freight of their bodies; how
quickly we utter our final words and fail
to recognize them as our own.