(Jachan Devol/Unsplash)

Is it a phantom

from some lost land

so long forgotten,

never quite gone—



some exiled spirit

whose wild night cry

startles the darkness

into reply?



We who are shorelings

start at that cry,

feel something in us

quiver with joy—



feel something in us

waken, take flight

into shadow lands.

Loon cry at night.

Tom Hansen’s poems appear in recent or forthcoming issues of the Midwest Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, New American Writing, Southern Poetry Review, and others. His book Falling to Earth was published by BOA Editions.

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Published in the January 2024 issue: View Contents
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