Vancouver Island, Easter Sunday, 1999
by Ellen S. Jaffe
Celadon waves
smoky green
crashing like dinner plates
on the shore of China Beach
this side of the Pacific,
table laid with kelp, stones, shells,
while worlds away
not Vietnam this time but Kosovo
bombs crash, not celadon,
not porcelain
not even stone or earthenware
but crude lumps of undigested hate
metal shells filled with gunpowder not
a handful of clams, soft-bellied, iridescent.
In the overheated kiln of war
houses, arms, hearts
living clay
meltdown to nothingness
once again
once
again.
