I write this introduction on a beautiful foggy morning, which is a perfect setting from which to share this week’s poem, Carl Little’s “The Reveal.” I love how playfully Little riddles around with the language and associations of fog, and how tangibly, how viscerally he conjures its touch.
Little is the author of “Ocean Drinker: New & Selected Poems” (Deerbrook Editions), in addition to numerous art books. His poetry has been featured in “Poems from Here” on Maine Public Radio and appears in “3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers” and “Local News: Poetry about Small Towns.” Originally from New York City, Little lives on Mount Desert Island.
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are now open. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers and other underrepresented voices. There is a link to submit in the credits below.
The Reveal
By Carl Little
The fog obscures but is not obscure,
moist and real, not cliché soup,
more like consommé. We haven’t
the foggiest, except we do, or at least
you can’t recall it ever being
this thick, like the wharf scene
in cinema noir, French smugglers
moving booze from the boat,
muffled by the stuff. Nothing
vague about this fog—we know
its clammy hands, clinging thing
that curls your hair for free and
later completes its thousand veils dance,
moving off to reveal what you’ve been
desperately looking for and avoiding:
islands and sea, world without end.
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “The Reveal,” copyright © 2020 by Carl Little, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of November. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.
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