A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

The Voyager

Ellen Chia, Thailand-Singapore

 

In its past life, it might have

belonged to any of these—

a bowl, a vase, a plate,

a teacup or an urn even,

objects fashioned by men

for utility, emerging from 

the furnace pristine, glazed.

Then used, expired,

shattered into shards,

offered to the sea,

forgotten by men.

But Nature pursues

her own designs,

inscribing her signature

on things left to her disposal.

 

Wave-tossed, wind-licked 

and sun-baked, this pottery shard,

a tiny fragment 

of its distant past—

an inch-wide trapezium,

white with half a china blue

peony motif, has emerged

at the end of a sea voyage,

inconspicuous 

amongst the debris.

 

There it lies in its new skin,

matte, chalk-smooth 

with an altered disposition,

its edges now curvy and benign,

exposed still to Nature's

perpetual perfection,

bearing witness to the design union 

of both man and the elements.

 

Ellen Chia lives in Thailand and whilst pondering over the wonders and workings of her tiny universe, finds herself succumbing time after time to the act of poetry making. Her works have been published in The Ekphrastic Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Neologism Poetry Journal, Zingara Poetry Review, The Tiger Moth Review and Chiron Review.

Run

Two poems by Ow Yeong Wai Kit