Poem | The Unshakeable May Remain

(Marcus Woodbridge/Unsplash)

Wracked by weekend storms,
The ocean froths, spumes, leaps and flops, creating

A foamscape of brief forms,
Of light-spark-pointed crests and blebby webs

Of white that last until the flecked wind ebbs,
And as it’s dissipating—

Only to surge once more
In bursts that bleach the sea and blanch the air—

I who observe from shore
Come to imagine giant fingertips

Combing, disquietly as the same wind whips,
The marled uncombable mane

Of an old man’s white hair.

Stephen Kampa is the author of three collections of poetry: Cracks in the Invisible (2011), Bachelor Pad (2014), and Articulate as Rain (2018). His work has appeared in the Christian Century, the
Yale Review, the Cincinnati Review, Southwest Review, the Hopkins Review, Poetry Northwest, Subtropics, and Smartish Pace. He was also included in Best American Poetry 2018 and Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic (2020). During the spring of 2021, he was the writer in residence at the Amy Clampitt House. He teaches at Flagler College.