Harm's Way
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Harm's Way
It sounds like a country road.It sounds like the swerveInto the oncoming laneOf a blind curve,One teenager goading anotherAbout their nerve;
It sounds like a wet stretchWhere a bridge tossesIts back over a riverAnd a valley of mosses,The humble guardrail studdedWith makeshift crosses,
Like the shrug of black iceAs the cold gets colderRunning next to the ditchOff the soft shoulderWhere the odometer stopsAnd no one gets older,
Or the path in a fairy taleThrough an ancient woodWhere the crumbs you dropped are gobbledAnd you're lost for good.And I would keep you out of itIf I only could. [End Page 383]
A. E. STALLINGS is an American poet who has lived in Greece since 1999. Her new verse translation of Hesiod's Works and Days is recently out with Penguin Classics, and a new volume of verse (Like) is forthcoming in the autumn with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
