Give and Take

All forms of landscape are autobiographical.
-Charles Wright

I’d describe myself as a white sea
without a coastline; without a cliff-
side to interrupt me, I am water
breeding water: I have no
southernmost point. But at the Cliffs
of Moher, the crests and
troughs of each wave are chisel and
stone dust: thick white
powdery outline of an obelisk that’s
always being forged. Think
of the Atlantic gradually eroding rock
shale and sandstone—
while the puffin lays its one egg in the
same burrow as last year
and the sea pinks domesticate the salt.

About the author

Beth McDermott is the author of How to Leave a Farmhouse (Porkbelly Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Jet Fuel…

Read the full bio

Issue 18 · June 2013

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