In this week’s poem, Isobel Curtis invites us into a meditation on the changing season, grief and a sudden glint at the horizon. I love this poem’s sequence of elemental images, sounds and sentiments, and how its final lines turn and lift us into promise.

Curtis works and lives in Bremen with her partner and her dog, Jasper. The tidal inlets, granite ridges and thick spruce fir forests of Maine’s coastline have taught her most of the important things she knows. She started writing poetry in fourth grade and hasn’t been able to stop since.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

Flirtation
By Isobel Curtis

Broken branches
Half a song
The pale yellow yolk
of the moon
First frost
Shared soup
a smile
Pockets full of rocks
The kettle screams
“How do we live now
in a time of deep forgetting
and remembering?”
Down by the ocean
salty lips
My tears flow
Into the collective body of grief
An endless horizon
Holds my sadness
I gaze hard and long
Until I will a rift of sky and sea
An opening
For something new to emerge
Hope
I think

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. “Flirtation,” copyright 2023 by Isobel Curtis, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.