Hunger

This poem appears in the Fall 2019 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

I’ve heard it called the Blue Effect, my hunger
For the sea. But, I walk this shore
And understand this craving is for more
Than a blue panoply. I want the plunder-
Seeking gulls that hover, swoop, and squawk,
The sinking of my feet in shell-studded sand,
And the foam-capped waves that race to tag the land.
I need the snowy egrets which croak and stalk
Their prey and me. I grieve the jellies, beached
And stingless, trapped in dying formless flesh.
Watching the gold-skinned anglers fill their nets,
I marvel that Earth’s lonely moon can reach
Across black weightless space to time the tide
And slow my breath and heart to coincide.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”