This week’s poem, by Jeri Theriault, is an ekphrastic work, inspired by visual art by Rockport artist Hannah Berta. I love this poem’s rich, kinetic energy; its visceral imagery of shifting wind, sea and grass; and its bracingly elemental sense of fervor and flux. 

Theriault, a Franco-American poet and visual artist, grew up in Waterville. She is the editor of the anthology “Wait: Poems from the Pandemic.” Her other books include “Self-Portrait as Homestead,” “Radost, my red,” “In the Museum of Surrender,” “Catholic” and “(M)OTHER.” She is the recipient of a Fulbright Exchange Award, a Maine Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, a Monson Arts Fellowship, the Norwood Prize (New Ohio Review), and a Maine Literary Award. Jeri lives in South Portland.

Seagrass Makes A Lovely Bed

  after Fog Day Grass, by Hannah Berta

You lie together
as the wind whips

the standing stalks
far above your heads.

You will remember that wind
scudding clouds

as sun-stunned. You swallow
grass/sky/wind/sea

your need so insatiable
you leave the rest of us almost

nothing—a gasp bleached
this white tangle.

— By Jeri Theriault

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. “Seagrass Makes a Lovely Bed,” copyright 2021 by Jeri Theriault, appears by permission of the author.