This collection of poetry touches on themes of family, childhood, memory, and loss. The title poem of the collection adopts the ocean as a metaphor for the realm of the collective unconscious where creativity lives, memories are stored, poetry is created, and where the dead struggle to visit. Poems such as “Survivors,” “Mother,” and “Boarder” cover the experience of being orphaned, while others address artistic obsession and objectification, asceticism and religious ecstasy, and the importance of grandmothers.