The Eternal Fog

The dawn arose, a shroud of gray,
A formless beast that would not stray.
It crept with fingers cold and slight,
From morn to eve, and stole the light.
Its breath, a whisper, soft yet dire,
Consuming all in quaggy mire.

No bird would sing, no bell would chime,
As silence hung, a mournful rhyme.
Each step I took, the ground seemed frail,
Each shadow cast, a phantom's veil.
The fog, a specter vast and grand,
Held all within its ghostly hand.

Its tendrils curled through windowpanes,
Like ancient chains or shadowed veins,
And in the vapor, faces loomed—
Eyes of despair, their truths entombed.
Were they the lost, the drowned, the damned?
The fog revealed what none could stand.

I swore I heard a mournful cry,
An orphaned wail that would not die.
A lover's plea, a soldier's moan,
Each echoed through that realm unknown.
And yet, no flesh nor form appeared,
Just mist that swirled and thoughts that seared.

It bore the stench of earth and sea,
Of graves unmarked and misery.
It wound around the ancient stones,
Through barren trees and hollowed bones.
Each gust a whisper: "Stay not near,
For in this fog resides all fear."

Through night it clung, an endless blight,
No star to pierce its grip so tight.
By morn, no sun could banish gloom,
The world a timeless, airless tomb.
And still it lingers, vile, untamed,
A ghostly fiend that none have named.

Oh, fog that drapes both land and soul,
What horrors lie within your scroll?
Do you conceal what man should dread,
Or merely mock the living dead?
Forever bound, I walk your maze,
Lost in your ceaseless, spectral haze.