Dead man's fingers-
short and still
or waving spindles
brain coral,
mountain coral
ground small-they
would be pebbles
if they weren't shards
hiding places
for trumpet
fish and crabs
live and dead coral
What is sand made of?
Who is to know
which is coral
and which
is bone
From the surface you
can see dark
patches where sea grass
and spirit hair grow

About This Poem
"When I heard that dead man's fingers is the name of a type of coral, it seemed appropriate, since so many people perished in the ocean during the transatlantic slave trade. 'Sea Garden' suggests that if you dive into the ocean, you will see beautiful and scary natural objects-some living, and some remnants of the dead."
-Rosamond S. King

About Rosamond S. King
Rosamond S. King is the author of "Rock | Salt | Stone" (Nightboat Books, 2017). King teaches at Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.


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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2017 Rosamond S. King. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate