Shortlisted
The Tan-Shaded Sea
Chinese International School, Abigail Arnold, 10
The tan-shaded sea.
Tall waves reach up to the sky, yet never crash down.
They mock gravity,
Obeying only their unrelenting master,
The harsh, biting wind.
This tide only knows
To flow but never ebb, rising in the full moon,
Surging in the new.
A flood that inundates, swallowing the green shore,
But never recedes.
Pride of the village,
The pagoda beckoned the weary traveler,
The farmer in his
Green, fertile and moist field marked the hours of his day
By its bell’s tolling.
No boat brings pilgrims,
Plows cannot carve furrows in shifting walls of sand.
The pagoda stands,
Rich yellow-red, rising above the amber flood,
As if to proclaim
“You may take my worshippers but I defy you.”
But how long until
The spray of that sea etches away the ancient
Vermilion and gold?
