The sea sprouts bushes, buds
with leaves, vegetation awash

in blue, sky blue, green shrubs,
everything stunted but lush. I take

my sheers and begin to cut. I trim
around so the lines flow

into circles, like large heads, and
all the while I walk through water

but never become wet. So much
the sea has changed—I do not

recognize it. When the breeze blows,
it does not carry the sea’s salt or

moisture. Even the air is contained,
a self of sorts. Every step

I readjust, and from somewhere
in the distance, I smell forest

before there were tracts of land,
when the landscape connected

place to place. Air,
the scent of the land of the Earth,

of the elements. O earth,
where is a trace of you?

/

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award and recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Cimarron Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, and Wisconsin Review. Her website is www.donnajgelagotislee.com.