Venice masks

Wednesday 5 July 2023

Rainforest - Eileen Chong

It is hard to carry these vowels.
Lost in translation—or found.
My namesake, so greatly desired

men set fire to a thousand ships—
the light they must have given off,
each sail a blackened flame sooting

the sky. I prefer the rain, a cloud
cradling drops that fall at an angle
over a forest that waits to receive.

The trees in this forest were carved
into shell, hot-needled and split.
The cracks reveal the days to come.

This deluge: groundwater rises
and collapses the earth. Seeds
begin to sprout. The pull of the moon.

What is to give light must endure burning.
Viktor Frankl

Eileen Chong (born 1980) Singapore (lives in Australia)

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