Referential Magazine: Predatorium

in perfect timing with my recent journeys, one of my past travel images now became part of Referential Magazine: Predatorium - the photo is from a visit to Tampa Bay Aquarium, this trip took place a longer while ago, but the memory of that day is still fresh.

i still remember the moment in the photo: walking into a dimmed room, and seeing this huge green tank. silhouettes of children in front, their chatter, and beyond them, in the water: sharks. and yes, it's fascinating to be able to see them from so close a distance. but standing there, i couldn't escape this second emotion: that there also is something disturbing about the way we gather all species, remove them from their natural habitat, and put them in zoos, to be able to visit them - and to own them, those who aren't made to be owned. like the gulls in Scot Siegel's poem, they belong to the wilderness, while we are lost without all our tools and computers:

search-n-rescue is stuck in port and
the storm has taken out our main server

we are the deckhands with ghost faces
our wives have gone mad on the cape

gulls cry in the distance; they are innocent
and hungry

messengers of salt and soot in the storm, gulls

have no religion no deity
but believe in a higher disorder

this is a cut/paste, here the whole poem: "in the absence of stars tonight, gulls" by Scot Siegel.

the sharks appear in the poem, too - first under the surface of words, then directly out there, in 13, in interference with the gulls.

the gull poem itself is relates to the word "nets" in "13 Ways of Angels" by Scott Owens, and lead to "Our Possible Life" by Jonathan K Rice - which yet waits for a refering image (hint), and also brings this travel-induced journey of poems and images to full cirlce with its first stanza:

Perhaps it was
a travel brochure...
.