Tsunamis
The planes have all stopped.
As I walk to the beach,
Right down the middle
Of the once busy road;
The white islands dash -
A fault-line chain,
Atop a shimmering, greyblack, liquescent sea.
And to my sides, now distant:
High thorn hedges
And ochre fields beyond
And the path I would walk
If still there were cars.
-
Then two ponies, eyes like gobstoppers
Try to eat nettles over the stile
The sun is too hot, even for flies
Who swarm at the shoreline
Of each dark oasis.
While the ponies, petrified, except for their tails,
Blink as I pass them into the lane -
Timeless, feudal lane;
Twisted, creaking pathway;
Tree-roots and tunnel-green;
Flints rubbed clean by countless footsteps,
Mark the ancient cattle ruts,
Glinting in the sloping half-shade.
They’re touched by light permitted through
Keyholes in the canopy.
-
And at the fallen ashen log,
I pause and drink my cooling flask -
Water from the high peak stream.
And up above, a bird cries out,
High and bright
And then goes quiet.
The sun is known for melting wings
And so it sits, brown as bark
Nestled in the darkthorn briar
Listening,
But finding only space unfilled -
Grasshoppers mute -
Driven off their native lands by invaders
And their desert sands of wheat.
-
From here I see the sea beyond,
Between the lower trees
And while I cannot see the coast, the beach,
I am a mile downwind
And smell the channeled, coastal air.
Pond still, it barely moves,
Yet just enough to breathe
And tell by taste alone what comes to bear;
As though my ribs themselves have ears
I hear the tide with every breath:
Stone tumbler, hissing marbles;
Exhaling the coastline,
Up to the weedmark.
-
My eyes close to perfect hush.
So rare:
When all the sounds thought lost to noise,
Are for a spotless time revealed
To be intact and clear; unspoiled.
-
The world is gone; the ocean calls.
And water fills my lungs, now gills
And oxygen; a breath of news,
Flows over them and then,
Resounding from abyssal sills,
A whisper from ten thousand miles:
The meltings of Antarctica -
The failing cliffs of tepid ice,
Their violence as they break apart,
Into the raging greyblack sea.
How quiet the foolish world must be
To hear their faint tsunamis sound.
-
And now I wake, I stand and walk,
Then wade.
And contemplate,
Barefoot to shallow shins, to knees;
Ancient ice, now wholly gone,
Swirling round my shivering legs;
Liquescent meltings
Of the bright-lit northern sun.
Too pleasant to imagine where it’s been,
Or from,
Or if within it,
What this really means.
—
Graeme Walker
© June 2021
