A Poem by Carol Alexander

Tsunami

 

Thousands drowned in the juggernaut wave,

blanched in the salt, tossed like small terns

gasping beneath the bold, resurgent smashing

of the seismic sea swell bashing the scrawny coast.

 

Tiny islands, blips on the radar of the bream,

vanished in the churn of the rutting sea

recasting the atolls, flooding the sandy seams.

 

The fisher clinging to his raft, his child

plucked by the watery claw

 

the slim man, naked,

climbed the shuddering palm

straining taut muscles, stripping fragments

from the slippery bark

 

the punishing whip of the mindless storm

peeling back eyelids, lashing wet spine

melding into the frantic tree

his dark mouth choking on the rain

 

only to feel some sneaking lull,

a  marine prayer that inbound sailors

mutter in their hempen chains

in the battering trains of certain colder waves

 

while the bright electric eels transmit loss

and the logy fireflies light our man safe home.

 

We watched his scraped shins pale against palm

one eye trained on the bruising sea

fingering his wounds, tasting bile, afterglow of

salted bodies rising, drawn up by the moon.

 

 

Carol Alexander is a writer and editor in the field of educational publishing. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including  Avocet, Chiron Review, Mobius, Numinous, The New Verse News, Red River Review, and OVS. New work is scheduled to appear in Canary, Eunoia Review, Sugar Mule, Poetrybay, and the Mad Hatter's Review. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies Broken Circles, Joy Interrupted,  The Storm is Coming, and Surrounded: Living with Islands.