Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
We lived happily by the sea Happily Until one day the sea, our mother Swelled up and sucked us in And drowned us. She did it without warning Saying nothing The morning was bright, the sun Glinted on the foam, whispered And sang to us. What offense did we give her, Our mother? What but toiling, hauling up our nets Red fish, blue fish to eat until She ate us. Tsunami All day my baby cried Then the sea stripped her naked We are not afraid of the sea, I think We love it In the flooded fields I found her floating face down I gave her mouth-to-mouth All that came out was mud Her body stiffened We do not worry about the sea It does God's work Always, a wave is coming
Notes: Though I grew up in the piedmont with the Blue Ridge Mountains on my western fringe, I have always held the sea as a consequential landscape symbol for its enormity, beauty and “endless rocking.” To enter its bosom, diving under the surf, eyes open to the undersea, is both exhilarating and terrifying. In my mind, the sea can be whatever the universe is—the cradle and the grave.
[We lived happily by the sea] is a new publication. “Tsunami” was first published in Weber Studies in Spring of1995, and republished in Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club: An Anthology of Poets Writing in Macon, edited by Kevin Cantwell and published by Mercer University Press in 2011.
The illustration is from surfertoday.com.
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