#2143 - all these faces, not a name to call

 

2143

6.315

12.xi.25

all these faces, not a name to call

ekphrastic for Suzann Victor’s 2025 ‘Sea Lantern II’

 

here’s the sea turning

we’re lapping up

and they look out

 

it’s long ago

we’re caught at their day

 

consider the washing ashore

an upper deck, a fan

bare branches of the bird, its tree

 

often grim, resigned

as if there were no fate of joy

 

here’s the earth shakes, lava spews

here’s a fine brocade

 

but build a castle for them

 

the white child where darkness tends

 

bamboo thatch

a cranescape

basket on head

 

the eye to its careful work

locked in

 

nets and ropes, all mystery

a heart sung green to sea

 

so many barefoot

sand and cement

 

mountains still standing behind

 

to bear the load

 

rust and funnel

 

hair tied

 

and some of those eyes are to accuse

some are lost to the waves

turned virtual, turned plastic

 

dumbfounding

a furl up

here’s now the rubbish tide of our time

 

as if there were an extinction

 

it’s once around the world and so

 

we drown to see all this