Edge, Atlantic, July
By Annie Finch
I picked my way nearer along the shocking rock shelf,
hoping the spray would rise up to meet me, myself.
Seagulls roared louder and closer than anything planned;
I looked out to see and forgot I could still see the land.
Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me;
shrunk in a tidepool, I heaved, and I wondered. The sea
grew like monuments for me. Each wave and its coloring shadow,
bereft, wild and laden with wrack, spoke for me and had no
need of my words anymore. I was open and glad
at last, grateful like seaweed and glad, since I had
no place on the rocks but a voice, and the voice was the sea’s:
not my own. Just the sea’s.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2020 by Annie Finch, “Edge, Atlantic, July” from Read Water: An Anthology (Locked Horn Press, 2020.) Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher.