Church Bells and Fog Horns

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.