The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (1916) | Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
Suggestions
- Read the poem aloud.
- Sandburg said he wrote the poem in the style of haiku:
Fact is, I had been carrying a pocketful of Japanese Hokus. A hoku is where you have to have exactly 17 syllables. If you have 16, you’re one short; 18, you have one too many. It’s far simpler than a sonnet. Well, I tried a free-going, independent American Hoku.
The World of Carl Sandburg by Norman Corwin
- Learn more about haiku.
- How many syllables does Sandburg use in the poem?
- How many syllables are in each line of the poem?
- A metaphor is a comparison between two seemingly unrelated and different things. In the poem, what metaphor is Sandburg using? (Little cat feet as a metaphor for fog.)
- Copy and illustrate the poem using Drawing & Writing paper.
- Write a poem of your own using a metaphor to describe something following the same pattern Sandburg did (6 lines following the 3 syllable/4 syllable pattern).
- Learn more about fog (see resources below).
Additional Resources
How Does Fog Form
Explanation from The Weather Channel.
Make Fog
Experiment!
Haiku
Interactive at ReadWriteThink.org that helps you write a haiku.
Drawing & Writing Notebooking Paper {Free Download}
For copying and illustrating the poem.
