Soranzio
Death shared a picture on your timeline
by Massimo Soranzio

A turtle stranded on the beach today
Caused life to be suspended, then and there.
People crowded the shore on that spot, they
Took selfies, or looked sad—but did they care?

I watched the scene from a distance and saw
Its deep-sea green carapace spotted white
By harmless barnacles, whose only flaw
Is, they’ll move only if they hold on tight.

Well, I don’t really like corpses, you know,
And I felt kind of sick when I was told
It was missing one eye, a dreadful show
(Yet quite attractive to some) to behold.

A meaningful, long life suddenly ends—
What stays is someone’s picture shared with friends.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: The same beach, with people concentrating on something else one summer later. This is Grado, on the northern Adriatic coast.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I was participating in an online workshop a couple of summers ago, and I had a deadline to write a poem adhering to some metrical form. I have always been in love with the sonnet form, which is often present in my poems in some variation, even when I apparently write in free verse. Anyway, I had spent my day at the beach with my family, and I still had in mind this unpleasant episode, so I decided to write a sonnet about it. (The text has been revised a few times since.)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Massimo Soranzio writes on the northern Adriatic coast of Italy, about 20 miles from Trieste. He teaches English as a foreign language and English literature in a high school, and has been a journalist, a translator, and a freelance lecturer on Modernist literature and literary translation. He took part in the Found Poetry Review’s National Poetry Month challenges Oulipost (2014) and PoMoSco (2015), and in a virtual tour around the world with an international group of poets on foundpoetryfrontiers.org.