The Sea / Is Sacred Still

Untitled Document

Sip the sea. Its salt stays on the tongue.
It burns                              like wine
               the open wound.
It heals.
                Do you have the heart to say
the truth? That it is full of strange bacteria,

indifferent to your pain. I move toward spilling out

but I will not. I will let you think the sea
is sacred still.
                       Perhaps, then,
you will try to save it.

Perhaps you’ll stand with me at the shore,
the sky now darkening, watching
the waves eat back the blueblack dunes,
shadowhills of sand, watching each wavecrash
reverberate, a drum that sounded
centuries ago, each crash a spoon scoop
more of sand, a cat’s rough tongue scraping
land back to waves, thinking, how long
until the world is sea again?
With every stone it swallows,
the ocean grows. When it laps at our
peninsulas, we take it for affection,
quiet in its claws, saying to ourselves,
this is just another sort of love, to wait
to see what happens, to stand there watching
as our feet sink in the sand, arms around each others’
waists, hoodies flapping black in the wind, our mouths
unmoving, patient, tired, only just now widening our eyes.

Credit

Copyright © 2025 by Andrew Calis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 4, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“I have a complicated relationship with the sea, and I wanted the poem to embody those complications. The sea is powerful, vulnerable, threatened, and a threat. It is the sacred place from which life first sprang and the source of many of my poems. But it is also a mystery, unconcerned with humanity, and has been slowly consuming land for decades, accelerated by our carelessness. More than anything, I wanted the poem to create a world of awe—to cultivate reverence for something sacred and mysterious.” 
—Andrew Calis