Alfred Stieglitz, Meeting of Day and Night, Lake George, 1896
Lantern slide, 6.7 x 2.3 cm
Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
The corned beef a bored man
pulls from a deli case so late
on a Sunday late October
in a harbor town looks less
than pink but we place our trust
in brine and drift down a pier
where the lake seethes like
steel come alive or the earth’s own
musing A pause and then
a vast inhuman will pummels
our moorings In violet light
a wave crests as a word
arrives dubious past its time
barely audible above the roar