The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 7/15/2008)

For the Fog Horn When There Is No Fog

Still sounding in full sun past the jetty,
While low tide waves lap trinkets at your feet,

And you skip across dried trident trails,
Fling weeds, and do not think of worry.

For the horn that blares although you call it stubborn,
In error, out of place. For the ridicule endured,

And the continuance.
You can count out your beloved—crustaceans—

Winking in spray, still breathing in the wake,
Beneath the hooking flights of gulls,

Through the horn's threnody.
Count them now among the moving. They are.

For weathervane and almanac, ephemeris and augur,
Blameless seer versed in bones, entrails, landed shells.

For everything that tries to counsel vigilance:
The surly sullen bell, before the going,

The warning that reiterates across
The water: there might someday be fog

(They will be lost), there might very well
Be fog someday, and you will have nothing

But remembrance, and you will have to learn
To be grateful.

Sarah Hannah

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Sarah Hannah received a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Currently, she teaches poetry at Emerson College in Boston. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from, The Southern Review, Parnassus, Agni, Rattapallax, Western Humanities Review, New Millennium Writing, The National Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review, and many other journals. She was also an editor at Barrow Street Press, and Poet Laureate of The Friends of Hemlock Gorge, an organization of nature conservators in Newton, MA. She was awarded a Governor's Fellowship for residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for summer 2001, 2002 and 2006. The original manuscript which became Longing Distance was a semi-finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 2002. Poems from Inflorescence have been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes. She grew up in Newton, and until her death in May 2007, taught poetry writing and literature at Emerson College.


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:hi:

RL

Her language use is just...sumptuous. Thank you... :hug:

yes, it certainly is...

:hug:

RL

Happy Father's Day Retro. :hug:

:hug:

RL

Mmmm...

What rich imagery!

I don't even have to understand it...

I'm just revelling in the way the words come off my tongue...

Wonderful!

Thank you for this, and for them every day...

I need to read these, and you make it possible!

Also...

Happy Father's Day!

:hug: