Sewol Tragedy Soliloquy
Bamboo has the elegance of Chinese symbols,
tells of winters, keeping your chin up when
cold delves in bone. The 3 year anniversary of the Sewol
tragedy is in a few days— try telling those parents
to keep their chins up; they’d pull the plug on the ocean,
cause mass extinction to marine life, just to cradle
the wet-through corpse of their child, apple
of their eye, turned coral, caked in the dank
viscera of sea & memory. It’s all over the news
: men are working night & day to raise
the ferry, 3 years late— looks like the sea’s being
dredged through a colander— we’ll say,
when the yellow water’s run off, a memory
the ocean’s had time to rub salt in, haunts us.
(Image by Argus Paul, a pal of mine, you can see his series on here.)
Daniel Paul Marshall 
“The ocean’s had time to rub salt in…” poignant line…
Took a while to get that one out actually.
It is very moving and well written. Another example of how very far above and beyond the ordinary haibun writer you are…
i find it difficult to write these sorts of poems, it is a new endeavour to me & there is so much to consider. The sentiment must register but not be over wrought; it is very easy to use tropes that are weak & out worn. Finding new relations to string the motif together is a toughy, because your thinking is it too abstract or not enough, does it connect, have i created variety within the motif rather than an obvious, dull repetition; is there action, does it move the imagery & emotion? Poetry is hard sometimes.
Poetry is hard, but you make it look easy.
The man behind the poem looks like he gave birth to elephant twins & now speaks in third person.
But the man who wrote the poem speaks in the fourth person and looks like he fathered the very nature of poems…
Painfully beautiful and sad at the same time, you did a wonderful job.
Thank you Angela.