The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Ekphrastic Book Club
  • Submit
  • Prizes
  • Ekphrastic Editions
  • Ebooks
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Give
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

​Lake Erie During a Seiche, by John Brantingham

12/8/2025

1 Comment

 
Picture
The Shipwreck, by JMW Turner (England) 1895

​Lake Erie During a Seiche
 
I was driving along Lake Erie during a seiche, the water peaking up nearly ten feet higher than normal, the chaos waves splashing up in spumes I could see through the trees. They said it could slop over the banks and onto my road, and I was glad I don’t ride a motorcycle anymore, not on days like this.
It brought back that painting by Turner about the shipwreck, and I wondered if there was anyone on Erie today. I figured there had to be someone, and they might be desperate and holding out their hands like the people in the painting trying to grasp the ship in the far away distance, a ship they couldn’t possibly reach, but times like that you grasp anyway.

Or maybe that was the other painting by Delacroix or maybe the one by Gericault. Anyway they all painted people in bad weather and drowning. People die on Lake Erie all the time because the lake is an unknowable place, and the seiche will drain the water near Toledo and then flood Buffalo, and everyone in between has to ride the chaos.

I was watching the chaos out my side window as I drove down to the prison where I used to teach college English sometimes. That was a year ago, so maybe most of them were out. Maybe they’d gotten jobs on ships that transported things in Lake Erie. I thought about my relatives, and I have a big family. Maybe I had third cousins out there now. Anyone could be out there now, and I wondered why it mattered whether I knew them or not. Someone was on a boat working a job they hated. Someone was on that lake with an outstretched arm posing for Turner, Delacroix, and Gericault all at once.

I pulled over at an overlook to see what I could see, and I didn’t see anyone, but the lake was all energy. It pulsed. It spumed. It was gray and white peaked, and I was glad not to be a seafarer. I might have been. My ancestors were. Some of them anyway. I wondered how many of them died in the sea. 

I thought about those paintings and realized that I loved them. All of those men in all of those boats were me, and I was them. I could feel myself riding the seiche and grasping for the shore. The way I’d rise up and be able to just make out land or a ship that was too far away to see me. The way my raft would bottom into the trough.

John Brantingham

John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.
1 Comment
Kate Bowers
12/10/2025 09:20:44 am

“the lake is an unknowable place” —so beautiful—yet we get a glimpse into it here and its life beyond the water it holds.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    January 2026
    December 2025
    November 2025
    October 2025
    September 2025
    August 2025
    July 2025
    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic [email protected] 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Ekphrastic Book Club
  • Submit
  • Prizes
  • Ekphrastic Editions
  • Ebooks
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Give
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead