The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Lizzie Ballagher

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Katshushika Hokusai (Japan). 1831-33.

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa

I am the one in the lowest boat
            my head flung back
            my face the colour of rice
            the colour of the distant moon
as the great wave     too                 flings back     crests
up       over      curving       curling              caving in

while I am only a white foam-speck
             my face a pale flint-fleck
my blue fishing jacket
             a drop of indigo water
at the foot of the glowering            towering     tide
    
our painted prow rises skywards
                                                             on the wave         but we are overswept

the mountain shakes
             even the very sea-bed quakes
                          heaves up     the tsunami
                                                              soaring              over             me

by beauty are we so engulfed
             in the unstoppable         rising         roaring     wave
                         all white-fingered
                                      more mountainous than Fuji

                                                  that we are done for
​
                                      small consolation to be dying a beauteous death
               forever                       poised            below           the wave
immortalized by Hokusai’s deep                  dangerous                 ink

Lizzie Ballagher

A published novelist between 1984 and 1996 in North America, the UK, Netherlands and Sweden (pen-name Elizabeth Gibson), Lizzie Ballagher now writes poetry rather than fiction. Her work was featured at the 2017 Houston, TX, Poetry Festival and also appears intermittently in South-East Walker Magazine and Poetry Space.  Having spent all her life in editorial and teaching work, she is a long-time member of the UK Society of Authors. She lives in southern England, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. Her poetry has appeared in magazines in England, Ireland and the US. Two of her poems have recently been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize.