This week’s poem, Myronn Hardy’s “Divulgence,” conjures a certain state of mind as the ash trees unfurl their leaves. I love the lyric quality of this poem, its vivid details and voice, and how it gestures only loosely at story, letting us immerse in and imagine this moment by the sea.

Hardy’s most recent book of poems, “Radioactive Starlings,” was published by Princeton University Press (2017). His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Baffler and elsewhere. He teaches at Bates College.

Divulgence

by Myronn Hardy

You are obsessed with six-spotted tiger beetles.

You stare at them from the rocks

you were asked to climb so as to feel a peculiar stability.

Their neon singes synapses as do

the new leaves of the ash trees

when you finally look up. As

you finally wobble from the rocks     as

you leap to the sand below     loose     flecked

blue shells shattered.

You had to get away from your town.

You had to see the sea.

You had to hear the fall of crests     louder     brasher.

You hadn’t anticipated that divulgence.

You had to be watched.

You had to be told anything you need

as the cormorants above made

spheres then took to water.

That purple they left in the blue.

You point there     that spot     that open

space surrounded.  You are surrounded.

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. “Divulgence” copyright © 2022 by Myronn Hardy, appears by permission of the author.