Poem Renaissance – Sara Letourneau

Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20^th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.

Swimming in the Aegean Sea
by Sara Letourneau

Naxos, Greece

It’s no more special than the Atlantic, you think.
Yet, with every step across the pale-sand beach,
you feel that breezy, unseen finger curl around you, pull you closer.
The sea doesn’t care that you’re wearing a bathing suit
for the first time in twenty years. It doesn’t care
that your explorer heart wants to wander the labyrinth
of the old port town, lose itself among the blinding white stucco,
the ocean-blue shutters and doors, the stray cats
and folk music, the ancientness permeating the air.
Perhaps the sea doesn’t care because
there’s nothing more ancient than the sea itself.
You realize this as one foot enters the shallows,
recoils from the chill, then both feet brave their way in.
No one gets used to cold water if they don’t forge through it.
This becomes a sort of mantra as you keep wading,
until the waves lick your calves, your belly, your chest.
By then, you’re no longer shivering, but remembering.
Lifting one foot underwater, then the other,
bending your knees, kicking your legs,
knifing your forearms and hands to stay afloat
just as you did decades ago during swimming lessons.
What is it about the ocean that brings back
your body’s fondest memories? This saltwater body
may be billions of years old, but it begs the child inside you
to duck underneath, to backstroke into the moment
before butterflying forward, to welcome its briny taste on your lips.
Does it matter that it’s not the Atlantic, your old friend
from back home? How could it matter
when it’s all one body stretching across the world,
waiting for you to come out and play again?

NOTE: “Swimming in the Aegean Sea” was originally published in Kelp Books’s 2024 Ocean Poetry Anthology.

Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024). She’s also a book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; the cofounder/cohost of the Pour Me a Poem open mic in Mansfield, Massachusetts; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem anthology. Her poetry has won the 2023 Beals Prize for Poetry and the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water contest. Her latest work can be found in Amethyst Review, The Arts Fuse, Gyroscope Review, Nixes Mate Review, Remington Review, Silver Birch Press, and Third Wednesday Magazine.

Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print

Previous Renaissance Poets

April Poets

May Poets