for Aysun

This has nothing to do with the moon.
The moon provides light so we can see
hard lines on faces drawn hard too soon.

Four hundred thousand faces trying not to see
the crowded boats and the sickening-sway,
those quietly facing an unquiet sea.

No one tells the children it’ll be OK.
There’s no singing and no one’s immune
to the fleeing, the huddling, the deciding, the sway

of the sea beneath the moon
where deciding, jumping, not-breathing, no fight
sways and has nothing to do with the moon.

On Ali Hoca Point beach there is no light.
The moon has made it West too soon
dragging another strange tide in without much fight:

beads, photos, phones, kelp,
plastic water bottles, a balloon,
papers, someone’s son and no help.
Strange tides have nothing to do with the moon.

This poem has also appeared in tether, Recent Work Press, 2023 and Blackmail Press 42.

**

Brent Cantwell is a New Zealand-born poet who writes, teaches and lives with his family in the hinterland of Queensland’s Gold Coast. He has recently been published in Jacaranda Journal, Westerly Magazine and Takahe. His first collection of poetry ether was published by Recent Work Press in October 2023.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents