Naruto Whirlpool. (Revised)

This is a great place for ship wrecks.

The basalt rocks - gnarled broken teeth

Snap at the salty spume with a sharks

                                                ferocity,

Yet catch on nothing airborne, nothing

                                                 fleeting,

Never deflecting the flight, the darting 

                                            cavalcades

Of soaring - diving gulls,

Those living knives slicing through the

                                                   waves..

But slow sailing ships are always easy prey,

Especially the overladen western galleons

Trading guns for silk - gold for porcelain;

And, according to the records, opioids.

These rocks are the islands secret weaponry,

Lurking pods of static submarines,

Waves clawing at their towers, whipping up

                                         whirlpools

Between the anchored keels.

Meanwhile, in his snow white inland castle,

The Shogun writes a poem about plum blossom,

Delicate as a torn wing - ephemeral as the spray.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

14th. - 18th. February 2021.

Hiroshige Prints, poem Number Three. The month of March.

Thinking back to my poem for November 2019, poetry is what the fisherman sees below the surface of the sea, what we call reality is what happens above the surface.