New at Last Grotto: "Morning Road" by Jacob Friesenhahn
A spare, haunting poem about flight and what follows. A figure drives into dawn, but the opening stanza establishes the stakes immediately:
Stopping would name
what was done.
The poem tracks the liminal moment between night and day, as the speaker moves forward into light while "the dark keeps pace, / waiting / in the long spaces— / unbroken / by mile markers." Despite the forward motion, despite the road curving and fields opening, the darkness persists—not left behind but traveling alongside, patient and unnamed.
A meditation on evasion, guilt, and the impossibility of outrunning what we carry. Published here for the first time.
From Jacob Friesenhahn's collection The Prayer of the Mantis (Kelsay Books, 2025).
https://lastgrotto.net/posts/morning-road/
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