I wrote a poem inspired by an artwork at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum.

If Hokusai Depicted the Shore

I found that things do not stagnate
Always inching towards flourishing
Or decaying. Maybe enchanted
By the ocean or engulfed by the flood.
It is water in essence yet functionally
Different. I’ll fixate on this: Could they carry
A drowning man’s struggle for the surface
To the nearest shore? Please send
Help – someone help him float – hope
That it gets to the one gasping for air.

Give it a century, the man is absent
The shore is no more. The water’s 
Approach to tranquility til there’s no more surface to cover. It would be difficult
To hope otherwise.