Before You Read the Plaque About Turner's "Slave Ship"*

See the bare canvas.                     A pure white
            bone that                                     splits the sky's
                weak, warm                                             skin of colors.

What will be left                             on the ocean floor,
What will be left                                         under the swells,
        What will be left                                                     is unspeakable
                and vivid                                             and not the vicious beauty
                of cracking masts                                         against the atmosphere
                writing lines of blood.                                             Not the blended light,
                or the curious gulls.                                                 Not the market's
                fanacious hope.

                                                                     Not the gods' desperation to include us in this disaster,
                                                                                            without our will. But the bare, bright,
                                                                                                    smoothed bones of many, many hands,

                                                                        so cold, down where the master
                                                                could not imagine,
                                                        could not light
                                            the darkest depths.
 

*J. M. W. Turner, British, 1775-1851
Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhon Coming On)
Oil on canvas (35 3/4 x 48 1/4 in.)

David Wright teaches writing and literature at Richland Community College in Decatur, IL.