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over the federal capital city

- This columnist's respectful Canberra adaptation of Carl Sandburg's famous poem about his similarly fog-blessed Chicago.

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Because we are living in accursed times (it is helpful to think of awful people like Trump and Putin and even our very own Pauline Hanson as curses inflicted on mankind) we must all, for our mental health's sake, count our many blessings.

Every Canberra winter I choose to say a heartfelt "thank you" for the blessing of Canberra's superabundant fogs.

This federal capital city, with an average of 47 fogs a year, most of them between May and August, is by far the most fog-blessed of Australian cities.

When and if Canberra ever creates a role of a city poet/Canberra poet laureate (every self-respecting city in the United States and the United Kingdom has one so why not cultured Canberra, too?) he or she or they will be bound to write about Canberra's unique and superabundant and transforming fogs. Fog-enviable Chicago has an average of 120 fogs a year and so it is no wonder that Chicagoan Carl Sandburg, so committed to writing about his characterful city, makes many poem-mentions of Chicago's fogs.

To give you an inkling of why your poetically sensitive columnist loves Canberra's fogs, I offer this little vignette.

One morning last week I awoke to find my distressingly average Canberra suburb (and for all I know the whole of Canberra) visited by a beguilingly suburb-transforming fog. It had arrived so silently, just as fogs do, its patient gracefulness meeting Sandburg's perfect personification of fog as a quiet, purposefully coming-and-going cat.

My especially boring neighbourhood of my especially boring........

© Canberra Times