The wreck buoy

A poem in my sequence about Turner's paintings of rainbows

The wreck buoy

The wreck buoy

God’s covenant blazes Hope
to a fragile ship aglow,
held in the hollow
of a great subsuming bow,
its sails lit up fiery orange.

Two more ships come sailing in:
one swelling against the wind,
illumined as if in white-hot light
or angelic flight; the second
a skeleton following behind.

A buoy gleams, marking
the spot where ships go down.
There sailors drown.
Above the ocean’s sound
you can hear ghostly clamours.

The breakers loom
and in apocalyptic gloom
we read our doom
in an un-manned boat, bobbing
among the shadows.

TW0360_9