“An eerie gray mist with a pervasive odor of fumes wreathed Warsaw and dozens of other Polish cities,                                          bringing a global problem more associated with Beijing and New Delhi into the heart of Europe.”

                                        ~New York Times, Jan. 14, 2017

 

Today I saw a white cat with a black tail sprint through a field of trees,

their bare branches pointing straight up

as if shocked that this surrounding white haze wasn’t fog.

 

Silly trees.

 

Even I’ve become used to blue skies that turn brown before touching

the horizon, to oxygen that smells and tastes burnt.

Today I opened my door, sniffed the air,

then retreated inside. It was not a day to run, to inhale,

to feel each breath scar the walls of my windpipe.

 

Yet on days like today the same air that coats the inside of my nose with black

also softens the light. Like a painter’s brush daubing a sheen

across a watercolor landscape,

Krakow, you are duplicitously beautiful.

 

You are the cat dashing by, all white but for your black tail,

a whiplash afterthought.

           (On your billboards children cry silently

           through plastic wrapped across their mouths)

 

You are the softness of the atmosphere and the scrape

of smoke inside my lungs.

            (A woman boards a tram wearing

            a face mask as white and black as you)

 

Slowly, Krakow, I am learning the meaning of gray.

To live in your smoky heart is to inhabit the gradient between two colors,

to slide from darkness into light,

or maybe the other way.