Turtle Island (part four)
Turtle Island
iv.
Great movements of the Banda Arc
Have stirred this little-reckoned peak
The Corinth for a contrary tide
Carried helpless and far asea
Sunset across a morning sky
A column boils heaven-high
An avalanche shoreward blanketing
Treetops engulfing, all left whited
A mainsail torn from the mast…this cloud
Lays itself likewise contouring earth
The ship is lifted by a swell
Of numbers doomed are none to tell
Prisoner and rescuer skim away
The ripping current catching
Watch her kin flee their coastal huts
Ten outriggers swamped while ten more spring
Thrillingly to burst the breakers
Tribal ensigns seen like flame
On stored provisions live that lucky handful
Twenty or so canoes to make a fleet
North they sail a hundred miles
passing only scoured beaches
Signaling but spotting not
flag, nor light, nor smoke
Three days of thirst at journey’s end
belaying hunger, bitter boon
and then at last the palm-ringed harbor
of a laborers’ town
Sundry goods, and many dead, the people say
come floating on the tide to use or burial
day to day
The prisoner and his wife, for so it was
She mourning for her loss, he miracle-blest
make their home in this forgotten place
Turtle Island
Turtle Island (part one)
Wonderfully Made
(2020, Stephanie Foster)