That year, sea-fog in tufted hanks
spun through the eucalyptus tops
below our attic flat,
thick coiling strands that looked as if
they passed right through the limbs—intact—
torn along the Panhandle toward the Bay
in the wet salt wind as though

mist and branches inhabited
worlds separate as that warm room was
from the winter weeks outside:
only damp darkening the leaves
at first, to show the two had touched,
and then the fogbank lowered, settling over
their slippery, peeling trunks.

Parchment scraps of their bark littered
the summer grass this afternoon
where I walked, looking up