From the Ancestor
Sometimes waves lap still
in this quiet quay,
where pale corals blackened
by motor oil spirals
rot away silently reminiscing
about the sunlight before
re-discovery,
Lend me your ear, love,
so much like a shell, delicately
pink, echoes stirring within,
the only thing not rotting,
that I may speak a live ocean again,
And press my ear in to listen.
Author notes
The poem is short and very tight. A lot is said through imagery, metaphor and symbolism. The persona in the poem is an ancestor who has passed on and, seeing what the people of today are doing to her island, she comes to speak to them. The first stanza establishes the negative elements of progress and mechanization symbolised in the motor oil polluting the reef. The poem starts on notes of uncertainty (diction: use of the word "sometimes" and mystery (universal ocean symbol). The sea itself is only barely alive as it "sometimes" laps at the shoreline.
Change comes in the second stanza and this is where you see the movement in the poem. The colour imagery of the healthy pink shell is juxtaposed with the earlier more sickly palour of the coral to communicate the movement. The shell is empty meanging the ear is open, allowing the ancestor to give council. The last line of the poem implies that the sea becomes alive again, the ancestor's words have been obeyed.
I am a Caribbean poet and it cannot be hidden. And "re-discovery" links to Colombus's 1492 rediscovery of the island on which I live. His coming upon it, opened the world's eyes to this part of the world, fuelling the first forms of slaver even before the Africans came later during the Atlantic slave trade. But basically Captialism is represented by using that term to open this historical setting as well.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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for many 1492 was a mark of drastic and unwanted change. Two continents, ages of civilization, converted into lucre, and the tide of wanton use continues in great and small ways; in small ways that by weight become great. [A million motorboats produce damage not on the evening news.] So wonderful here the joining of the love of nature and honoring a culture...PK
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bravo
This is lovely, with excellent alliteration which so wonderfully seduces the reader ...bravo...bravo..bravo...
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Very deep, as usual, Marissa. I was left reeling by your first line.
Best wishes in the contest.
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lovely
this is a great piece. i like the perspective you took this from (an ancestor, or the island itself). i wasn't expecting many submissions from an inanimates perspective, but this is definately intriguing, and i like the way you effectively incorporated the rise of commercial, industrial and modern lifestyle in juxtaposition to that life that the ancestor once knew.
all in all, a lovely submission. i wish you the best of luck in this contest and in all your writing endeavors.
with love,
~pasha
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