The Sea Waits, the Buckthorn Endures | Baek Seok & “The Gray Ocean” — Life After Loss

There are moments in life when a sea that once shimmered blue suddenly turns gray. Someone leaves. A season ends. A dream fades. And we find ourselves standing on the same shore, wondering: How long should we wait for what may never return? My poem, “The Gray Ocean,” begins with that longing — a person standing by the sea, waiting for a beloved season to come back. Baek Seok’s poem “Namshinuiju Yudong Baksibongbang” begins somewhere very different: in a cold, lonely room, where a man sits with his sorrow, regret, and sense of loss. Yet the two poems eventually meet at the same human question: How do we continue living after we have lost something precious? At the end of Baek Seok’s poem, a solitary buckthorn tree appears, standing alone in the snow. The sea waits. The tree endures. And perhaps this is what time slowly teaches us. There are things we should wait for. There are things we must endure. And there are also things we eventually have to let go. For a long time, I thought I was waiting for someone to return. But as the years passed, I began to understand: Perhaps the person who truly needed to return was not the one who left, but myself — the self that had become lost inside sorrow. We do not have to erase the people we loved. We do not have to deny the seasons that once made us happy. But we must not lose the rest of our lives simply because something precious did not return. The sea may still be waiting. But perhaps, beside that sea, we can learn to stand like a tree — rooted, quiet, and enduring. 🎧 Morning DJ Han Kiyoung 📖 Read more on my Naver Blog: https://blog.naver.com/hkypch #BaekSeok #TheGrayOcean #Poetry #LifeAfterLoss #Grief #Healing #Resilience #Literature #LifeLessons #KoreanPoetry #MorningDJHanKiyoung