A Pastel Rain

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg 
__

Suddenly it was there.  One moment not, the next it was.  Diaphanous, subtle, silent.  A pastel rain.

Perhaps it was all in the eye of the beholder for the surface of the lake did not register the conjoining of minute droplets of moisture.

 
What earlier had been vibrant under a brilliant sun was now gossamer.  A meteorologic halcyon come home from sea, soothing the waves and white caps.

Maybe a temporary translucency obscured one's vision, an ephemeral cataract shrouding a common loon as she warmed the new life beneath her body. 

Or was it really seen?

Did we really see a nesting swan through the mist?

Or gulls swaddling their incubating eggs?

 Or the spins and rolls and stops-in-mid-flight of ghost terns?

Who can tell what's real or what's finespun imagination during a pastel rain?