[Poetry] After the Storm by Joanne Durham

the newness of each of us     out from shelter --

a woman with walking stick stoops for sea glass

thinner  smoother      algae strung like hair

pulled out at the roots    sea oats that survived 

startled sideways          the new blue sky a balloon    

that stretches and stretches but doesn’t pop       new isn’t

a big enough word to hold the new

you’d notice even without a one-year-old

on his first crawl         in the sand      

yesterday’s mulch new           to his toes   

apricots to tongue     new stunning     familiar

the wrenching grip of my womb     forgiven

at my infant’s first smile     my breath new to its gasp

at how the sea thrashed       dismembered

the wooden steps     broke the slope   of the dunes

Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022). Her chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023), explores life in a small beach town on the Atlantic Ocean. Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Whale Road Review, Stonecoast Review, Nature for Our Times (Poets for Science) and many other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the sea as her backyard and muse. Visit her at https://www.joannedurham.com.