A poem about a long marriage might describe the couple as perpetually at loggerheads over the small things — the window left open, the silence at dinner — while beneath the argument lies the bedrock of forty years; In political verse, two nations at loggerheads over territory become a meditation on how proximity breeds both intimacy and irreconcilable conflict; The archaic sound of loggerheads suits historical verse — a poem set during the English Civil War where Parliament and Crown are at loggerheads, each certain of divine sanction; A poem about creative collaboration gone wrong might describe two artists at loggerheads over a single image, the argument standing in for deeper incompatibilities of vision; The idiom suits poems about siblings — their at-loggerheads battles as children recollected in middle age, the old conflict softened by time but never fully resolved; In a nature poem, two stags at loggerheads becomes both literal — their antlers locked — and metaphorical, a figure for the productive impasse of creative struggle