..there might someday be fog

As I am currently working on my application to Columbia University's MFA program, it is impossible to not think about the late Sarah Hannah, Columbia alumna & my thesis adviser & confidante at Emerson College. I can't believe she's been gone for two years now, and that I'm still so shaken by her suicide. Haven't been able to bring myself to read her book from Tupelo Press, but soon, soon. Anyway, here's a poem of Sarah's that I always liked.


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.