January 2022
Author's Note: "Souls" is a poem included in Nightshades, a collection to be released this spring by BlazeVOX Books which carries exemplary cover copy by Marilyn Taylor, and Dennis Barone who was gracious enough to accompany me on the 'Stevens' Walk' from the Hartford Insurance Company where Stevens worked to his home on Westerly Terrace in Hartford, CT in late October of last year.
Souls
Tell me now at night the fog did not roll in like distant nebulae, surrounded the houses of the town, hung itself about the mountain’s crown like a lazy laureate, that it did not bring out something in us all, a deeper sleep, so many drifted off, as others, the curious few, wandered out into the mist, breathed it in, spoke of it as if their breath and the fog’s were intermixed, each becoming the other’s own.
First published in the fall issue of Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters
©2022 Michael Gessner
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