The Lord Enclosed the Sea
by Regina Walton
Regina Walton is publishing her first collection of poetry, The Yearning Life, with Paraclete Press. It will be out in the fall, and is the winner of the Phyllis Tickle Prize in Poetry. She has recently published poems in Poetry East, Soundings East, Scintilla, Asheville Poetry Review, Anglican Theological Review, and Spiritus. Her academic writing includes essays in Studia Liturgica and Preaching and the Theological Imagination (Peter Lang, 2015). She received her Ph.D. in religion and literature from Boston University, and currently serves as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts.
Then enclosed some of the sea in us--
And so we crave to taste
More of what we are,
Visceral abyss.
To taste but not to drink--
Parched inversion of drowning, unslaking
But to place a few grains on the tongue,
Animal, mineral,
Salt marsh of the body,
Fermenting memory--
Until the sea-wind reclaims its kin,
Ebb and flow freed from its hold,
Sweeping us back in.
Regina Walton is publishing her first collection of poetry, The Yearning Life, with Paraclete Press. It will be out in the fall, and is the winner of the Phyllis Tickle Prize in Poetry. She has recently published poems in Poetry East, Soundings East, Scintilla, Asheville Poetry Review, Anglican Theological Review, and Spiritus. Her academic writing includes essays in Studia Liturgica and Preaching and the Theological Imagination (Peter Lang, 2015). She received her Ph.D. in religion and literature from Boston University, and currently serves as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts.
Then enclosed some of the sea in us--
And so we crave to taste
More of what we are,
Visceral abyss.
To taste but not to drink--
Parched inversion of drowning, unslaking
But to place a few grains on the tongue,
Animal, mineral,
Salt marsh of the body,
Fermenting memory--
Until the sea-wind reclaims its kin,
Ebb and flow freed from its hold,
Sweeping us back in.
