Brent Cantwell is a New Zealand writer from Timaru, New Zealand, who lives with his family in the hinterland of Queensland, Australia. He teaches high school English and has been writing for pleasure for 22 years. He has recently been published in Sweet Mammalian, Turbine/ Kapohau, Verity La and in a New Zealand Poetry publication called "Penguin Days".
Strange Tides
for Aysun
This has nothing to do with the moon.
The moon provides light so we can see
Hard lines on faces drawn hard too soon.
Four hundred thousand faces trying not to see
The crowded boats and the sickening-sway,
Those quietly facing an unquiet sea.
No one tells the children it’ll be OK.
There’s no singing and no one’s immune
To the fleeing, the huddling, the deciding, the sway
Of the sea beneath the moon
Where deciding, jumping, not-breathing, no fight
Sways and has nothing to do with the moon.
On Ali Hoca Point beach there is no-light.
The moon has made it West too soon
Dragging another strange tide in without much fight:
Beads, photos, phones, kelp,
Plastic water bottles, a balloon
Papers, someone's son and no help.
Strange tides have nothing to do with the moon.
