Last year, while living in the Lorraine
region in the northeast of France,
in the Moselle department,
Alec and I awoke to the sound
of church bells ringing in the morning.
These were not distant bells from
some countryside church. Our
bells rang next door to our apartment,
from the 12th century fortified
church in Lessy. These bells would toll
through the day, musically marking the hours,
a memory of days gone by when the ringing
of the bells beckoned all to stop and say
a prayer, the Angelus, or come to
church for mass or even to
gather in the village.
Here, in Blue Rocks,
though an Anglican Church
sits at the end of our block,
I have yet to hear church bells.
Last night, I awoke to a different, haunting
sound piercing the darkness,
as if a a tuba was keening in the distance.
In the morning when I asked Jeff if he heard
the music he said, "you mean the foghorn?"
On foggy days I now listen for the forlorn
sound of the foghorn bellowing from the sea.
Sure enough she is there, guiding
mariners out of harms way and me toward
the fog settling on our rocky coast.
 |
| blue boats in blue rocks on a foggy morn |
"One night, while walking home in a dense fog,
as he approached his house ,Foulis heard
his daughter playing the piano but noticed
that it was the very lowest notes which he
could hear most clearly. "
If I can hear these low notes in the fog,
Robert Foulis pondered,
would not the mariners
hear these same notes
and upon hearing be warned away
from the dangers of a rocky coast?
Aroused by his artistic and engineering spirit
Foulis, a transplanted Scot living in the
maritimes of Canada, invented the first steam
powered fog horn and changed the face of
marine navigational history.
I grew to love the
church bells in Lessy,
ringing reminders to slow
and still my hurried pace.
Now, in this landscape
without fortified walls,
with no church bells
to ring me to stillness and
only a rocky, jagged coast
separating me from the sea,
I listen for the foghorn,
her low, keening tune
a siren to steer me.
