Cait Phenix

Pearl

Has there been enough rumination?
Is the sand just right, a first fine tickle,
then the only grit on which to dwell?
Has there been enough submersion,
enough of worry’s calcified abrasion?
Wave after wave of inky swell,
is the imagined real inside the rocky shell?
Tides return and return again
scouring the silt for wonder.
Tearful ritual, cool catharsis,
beneath the moon’s realised gleam
the search for lustre:
something come of darkness,
something made of dream.

Cait Phenix is a recent graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Oregon. In 2021 she was a recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Award. Her poems have appeared in The Stinging Fly, Abridged Magazine, The Apiary, and the Seamus Heaney Centre’s partnership with the Ulster Museum’s Changing Views and A Unique Silence exhibitions.