Walvis Bay

One look
at this coast’s
twisted Casuarina and Coconut groves
pebble-strewn beaches
reef-gutted boats
and battered faces
with vacant eyes;
shouts! this is cyclone country.

One struck here
and in the whisk of it's eye
towed anchored ships away
drowned hundreds of fishermen
depositing driftwood from battered boats
(funeral pyres for the living and dead)
left ashore.

Another was forecast
with bigger waves
better copy
gorier footage
more numbers of dead
jetslam, flotsam, for scribes
laden with mineral water (and hip flasks).

The one that was to
did not follow the one that landed,
it hit some other coast
drowning some more fishermen
battering some more boats
on another coast
one unwatched, all alone.

Around Walvis Bay, they are still religious,
temples and priests in high demand;
the other coast,
I, I, I.....don't know;
why that coast?
why not this coast, again?
why any coast, at all
why close thousands of eyes in the blink of one?