Jeanette Hardage anthropomorphizes nature in the poem below with its imagery of fog “conquering” a hill. As a frequent resident of coastal California, she had many opportunities to witness this phenomenon. She first wrote this in 1961, probably as a class assignment. She reworked it at least twice in 1996 but there is no record of its ever being published in any form. The last 1996 version appears here.
Conquest
Proud hill—
Fog fingers fill up valleys,
Willful wanderers
Seeking hollows,
Capricious caresses
Penning damp messages.Helpless hill—
Fickle fog fingers
Point, stretch upward,
Enveloping, choking,
Stifling.
Succumb, hill.