At the last, you might find yourself at the mouth 
of a tunnel like the ones you witnessed as a child 
riding on the subway. Lights flickered, then went dark, 
but you could still make out shadowy figures hanging 
from ladders, flashing lanterns, wave of white tile 
arching overhead. When the train breached the surface, 
wreathed in steam, you were a hero in an epic, emerging 
from the underworld. There have been other tunnels. 
Sometimes, on your trips to visit cousins in New York 
in your father’s turquoise Chevy, you’d descend into Holland 
Tunnel, beneath the Hudson. The radio signal sputtered as you 
drove in, blinking back loud brightness, cars nosing forward 
like trout. But no one got the bends. Years later, you hiked under 
an overpass in Honolulu, where tropical dusk enveloped you, 
the aroma of frangipani and soft moths, opening into the light 
of noon at the other end. They say a warm light awaits 
after the final darkness. Some proclaim they saw a ramp 
ascending into clouds like the one Moses climbed. Or else, 
there might be this—rough wooden pier suspended over 
nothing, milky sea of fog or cloud, slender wooden 
walkway that just stops. 

—Inspired by this photograph by Vassilis Tangoulis:

Untitled B&W photograph of pier and lightning by Vassilis Tangoulis.
Copyrighted © by the photographer. All rights reserved.
Appears here with his permission.

A larger version of this image is the opening photograph in an essay by Katie Hosmer about the work of Vassilis Tangoulis in My Modern Met (25 April 2014): Expressive Black and White Long-Exposure Landscapes.

Vassilis Tangoulis

is an academic lecturer and a fine art photographer based in Greece. Despite his full-time career as a physicist working in the Chemistry Department at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, he has also found success through his lifetime passion for photography. He is known primarily for his B&W long-exposure landscape photography, for which he has received international awards. He is drawn to long exposure photography because it allows him to add a fourth dimension—i.e., time—to a three-dimensional object. Yet he also enjoys experimenting with color techniques in different photographic genres.

Learn more about the artist at Vassilis Tangoulis Fine Art Photography: https://vassilistangoulis.com

Robbi Nester

is a retired college educator and the author of four books of poetry. She has also edited three anthologies of ekphrastic poetry and hosts two monthly Zoom series. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently MacQueen’s Quinterly; ONE ART: a journal of poetry; Storyteller Poetry Review; Verse-Virtual; and Whale Road Review.

Author’s website: https://www.robbinester.net

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Three Poems in Verse-Virtual (November 2024)

⚡ Dancing White Egret, ekphrastic poem by Robbi Nester after a photograph by Philippe Rouyer, in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 14, August 2022)

⚡ Naughty Bits, poem in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 11, January 2022); nominated by MacQ for Best of the Net 2023.

⚡ After Blossom, ekphrastic poem after an etching by Phil Greenwood in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 3, May 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best of the Net 2020, and selected as a Poetry Finalist.

⚡ In Memory, five poems by Robbi Nester in Live Encounters (August 2021)