"Write to save yourself," said Athos, "and someday you will write because you have been saved."

-- Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

*

Rock Bottom

So this is what it comes down to in the end: earth and sand skimmed, trimmed, filleted from rocky bone, leaving only solid unshakeable bottom, what doesn't in the end give in to the relentless hammer, whoosh, and haul-away of tides but stands there saying "Here I am here I stay," protestant to the pin of its absolute collar, refusing to put off the sheen on its clean-scoured surface, no mourning weeds in spite of loss after loss – whole wedges of the continent, particles of the main plummeting from one element to the other and no going back to how things were once, but to go on ending and ending here.

-- Eamon Grennan

*

The Grand Hotel in Cape May

When news comes on the radio
you wake up, think of eggs and almost
love your country. Maybe the road back
to yourself begins with common courtesy,
the Please on the sign advising where
to throw sanitary napkins, the neutral tone
of the newsman designed to offend no one—
you used to mind this, but now you see
there are people in hotels everywhere
and what they need is clean sheets,
heat in the winter, coffee in the morning,
so wipe away the fog, shave your face
and become human again. They don't
know you here, and they forgive you.

-- Douglas Goetsch