Two Tsunami Poems

Portfolio Octopoda/o V3. N2.

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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