A MOVEMENT
Does there exist, and
has there ever existed,
a movement to make
the muddy plain strewn with wrecks
and lost goods west of Lisbon,
that people witnessed
some time All Saints' Day morning
1755,
the new Atlantic normal
all oceans should aspire to?
In less than an hour
sea came back, racing horses,
smashing all it touched.
Normal for when plates collide.
Not normal for living by.
This poem was written in response to a prompt in Jo Bell's workshop 'Try to praise the mutilated world', which she ran as a closed Facebook group in November 2020. The workshop was for the duration of the UK's second Covid-related lockdown, and the prompt that led to this poem was #7, on the theme of cataclysm. I can't now remember why I made it the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.
'A movement' has now found publication in Acumen #104, September 2022.
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