In this week’s poem, “Marshpunk,” Claire Parker offers a meditation and invocation on the edge of the sea. I love this poem’s gathering of objects, beings and elements, and I love its reverent leaps between the abstract, the mystical, and what is right here, in front of and all around us.
Claire Parker (she/her and they/them) is a transplant to coastal Maine. She grew up in Southern California and traveled all over the West Coast and western mountains as a young adult, including multiple jaunts to Alaska. She is an organic farmer, community herbalist, woods witch, former trail crew and forestry worker, and now spends most of her time in Midcoast Maine. She has been writing poems since she was four years old.
Marshpunk
By Claire Parker
Under the quiet evening light
It brings us
out into the cold icewater
under eager words & wings
We’re in the rowboat of sacred names
solid and sturdy
and here I go into everything
We see the ghostlights and
we move into the fog, shifting & wondering,
are we the end of Empire? Are we sleeping and dreaming?
Are we the ones most needing?
We are working on heaven’s template
Witch hazel and Elder wands ready,
Hawthorn branches and Rowan boughs heavy
Facing towards the sea, open & windy
and rocks & bones, and Lady’s slippers’
marsh dreams—
I brought you the rainfall
to wish you to sleep
I brought you the windthrow
row of Cedars, dark & clean
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Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Marshpunk,” © 2024 by Claire Parker, appears by permission of the author.
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