richard:

Self consciously obscure. There are many interpretations of the last stanza which is a forced fit into the first two, primarily descriptive, stanzas. Fog, loom,owl are formula words that are supposed to evoke ominous allusionsIs the friend symbolically dying? Why is she wheeling? Who cares? When a poem can mean anything to anyone it means nothing to me.

Dear Richard,

"Walking in Fog" is not as obscure as many of the Tuesday Poems (although it shares the introspection of most of them). Most of the time the language is very clear, and that includes the language of the last stanza. Mr. Goldensohn is trying to get us to think and to feel beyond surfaces, but he isn't trying to make his poem mean just anything to just anyone. It really isn't that hard to figure out what's going on -- provided you've been (as I have) in physical circumstances such as the author describes and (like me, regrettably) have had death of friends and family as a close companion all your life.

Different people react differently to impending death. Some (like the poet) face it with trepidation; some, with resignation; some (like the poet's dying friend), with courage and joy. Now put the first and the last in the same physical circumstances: a foggy day in some canyon somewhere. Mr. Goldensohn reacts stereotypically to foreboding images in the fog (all suggestive of death, the unknown, and the uncertain). The simplest explanation is that he means us to understand his reactions that way, and that implies something about his frame of mind. His friend -- the one who is actually dying -- reacts in an utterly different and far from stereotypical way, embracing life wholeheartedly rather than just surrendering slowly to death. I believe that her reaction also symbolizes the day-to-day circumstances of her dance with death. But instead of "a daily miracle", the poem reads "daily magic" to hint at the woman's day-to-day survival. I think that choice of words might say much about the poet's worldview, willy-nilly.

The poem is subtle, but not confusing. It's open to more than one interpretation, but not to endless interpretations -- just like the images one sees on a foggy day.

wr ()()