On Seeing the Tsunami
for all in its way and its wake
I’ve watched waves crash like that before.
I’ve stood on safer ground like them
and photographed the curvature
of surge—an ocean’s requiem
to evident infinity.
But never had the breaking sea
continued on like that before;
I never had to turn and run
to steer clear of the nevermore
while unwavering water sealed the sun
and everything surrounding me.
I never saw that higher sea.
THERE AND GONE ….
-
Here is an autumn hokku kindly shared by a reader in Japan: In a moment,It
no longer is —The rainbow. When we look at English poetry, it is common to
ask t...
3 weeks ago
9 comments:
I like.
I sense an almost nostalgic tone to this. Not quite that, it's as if it is nostalgia mixed with something else. Can't quite put my finger on it.
I sense an almost nostalgic tone to this. Not quite that, it's as if it is nostalgia mixed with something else. Can't quite put my finger on it.
Thanks all. Nostalgic? I was hoping for elegiac, but by putting myself in the scene, I can see why nostalgia could make an appearance. I know I'll never look at ocean waves the same ever again. So there was an innocence lost here I'm sure.
Thank you for the kind words. They are much appreciated.
But, Lord knows that grammar is not my strong point. But I'm not sure if I agree with your evaluation here. I believe there are three tenses here and all are needed.
The first is present perfect. I am discussing an event, watching waves, that happened in the past and will be repeated in the future.
Then we shift to the past perfect (sea had, I never had) because this past event (tsunami) is being related to the present narration.
Lastly, the tense shifts to the past as a simple statement relating to the past, the tsunami and the past events of watching waves.
Not that this explanation was in my mind when I wrote this. But the tenses wrote themselves because of the situation at hand.
As for punctuation, again I see no glaring problem. The em-dash seems acceptable in that context. And the semi-colon also seems acceptable, separating two independent clauses (both with same tense by the way).
I'd like to hear your side of the story though.
um well i didnt think thta it was to great sorry to say but well actually i just wanted to be different and leave a negative comment.He,he,he.
wow, deep, you can never really picture it untill you've seen it already.
OMG I like totally like cheese
sorry about that i was bored so i did something random and stupid
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