A Poem-A-Day Celebration

Poem submission by joancarr

Hamako lies in a watery grave, sad eyes watching as her life floats by.

There goes the roof of her house - her mother’s wedding kimono - her favourite doll.

There goes her grandfather’s pen. He writes such beautiful characters.

He was teaching Hamako but no the pen is gone she will never learn.

There goes the fan that her mother saved from the earthquake when all else was gone.

It was silk. It belonged to her great grandmother.

A year goes by and on a distant shore, where children of a different race play on the beach, the doll, eyeless, dismembered, sprawls unnoticed

Why are the fish dead, the children ask as they dip theri nets into the rock pools.

Why are the fish dead the fishermen ask as they pull their meagre harvest from the sea.

The world turns and the tides run and the huge wave that took Hamako from her family has spread itself wide across the ocean and brought sadness to another country where another people, smug in their western affluence, thought themselves safe from such disasters!