Fog

/ Issue 9.1 /

Two fog-horns disagreed
About the note of grief.
One said it was the reef
To which all currents lead,

The other: no horizon,
No shadow, and no sun.
Off-white, ecru, dun,
The sands that shells bedizen

Shuffled beneath our feet.
All definition scumbled;
Millionaire real-estate
Foundered, unmoored.  Down tumbled

The sky, pearl-grey and pale,
The sea broke into cloud,
(The fog horns owned aloud.)
Two hurts stood in grey-scale,

And only a fathom apart,
Yet fathomless it seemed,
The dissonance, athwart
Which no lighthouse beamed.

What wasn’t lost was blurred:
Only what was spoken
Or what heard, could betoken
Driftwood, sand-dollar, bird.

And where erosion shelved,
Erasure of pier and plinth,
The interval hung unresolved
In a far-flung minor seventh.

A. E. Stallings

A. E. Stallings

A.E. Stallings is an American poet who has lived in Greece since 1999. She has published three volumes of translation, most recently a verse translation of Hesiod's Works and Days from Penguin Classics and The Battle Between the Frogs and Mice (Paul Dry Books). She is the author of four books of poems, most recently Like, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She has received grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim, and the MacArthur foundations.
A. E. Stallings

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Author: A. E. Stallings

A.E. Stallings is an American poet who has lived in Greece since 1999. She has published three volumes of translation, most recently a verse translation of Hesiod's Works and Days from Penguin Classics and The Battle Between the Frogs and Mice (Paul Dry Books). She is the author of four books of poems, most recently Like, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She has received grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim, and the MacArthur foundations.