It is one grand gesture: this full-arm stretch,
hoisted overhead then let fall sidelong.
Not royal hand in limp rotation,
rather – from the fulcrum of our elbows –
a sweep of unversed semaphore
bridging seen-but-not-heard distance.
I’m on deck at the starboard rails,
or port side - if leaving not arriving.
You’re leant on a seaward wall, looking out.
Or some other face to face perhaps?
Beached below, one of us unfurls
a rug, settles down with friends on shingle.
What remains these days is dumb show, doubtful.
Mostly we go nameless, under
the radar hide our light. Each to their own.
But waving at total strangers –
an ageless urge, hard to resist
in narrow straits – is least that we can do.
vii. 2019
This poem evolved from one of those all-too-rare moments when you can see the whole and its endpoint right from conception. But translating that middle-of-the-night moment into a finished piece was harder work than I supposed it might be. In particular I struggled with the obliquities and allusions of the last stanza, how to make them sound unforced. As always, whether I succeeded is for the reader to judge.
ReplyDeleteThe title comes from the lazy-thinking, cheap-shot jibe, “virtue signalling”, which has become popular online among those who seek to abuse the motives of anyone who wants to protest. Plainly the poem is not about that, though I did want to turn that notion on its head by writing about the benign human impulse to reach out, to communicate. When authenticity is questionable at every turn, I think it is vital to hang on to such moments.