foghorn

by John Martin

Sea grey and flat.

Fog,

its greyness merging with the plate of water

in a continuous monotone.

Complete silence is an absence

between each foghorn drone;

distant and sad,

laden with amorphous undefined dangers

at unknown distance on the starboard quarter,

or perhaps ahead.

The anticipation of the next moan

brings both anxiety that it will not come

and fear of its imminence.

Then suddenly the far thud

of a warning gun in another quarter.

The two unknown distant dangers

Out of phase.

John Martin’s 2004 collection, “The Origin of Loneliness” was followed by poems in The London Magazine, Magma, The Lancet, Dreich, Trasna, Drawn to the Light and Ink Drinkers magazines. A former soldier, he studied philosophy before medicine and currently works as a doctor and scientist in Europe and the US.