Here.
Where the earth twenty years earlier
swallowed fifteen thousand lives,
she said she could feel the ghosts
late at night on the beach.
They sat huddled together for warmth.
He thought the space had been
impressed for them-
stamped through catastrophe.
Only the most serious listener could hear.
In the morning it would be
the same story in another voice,
a gray tone, rich and immutable,
the sorrowful surf genuflecting under a shroud sky.
The oceans are nature's timepieces.
Here.
the measured history is a wailful remembrance.
Not so much for those who survived,
but to the ocean that felt itself
rearranged with jarring jolts,
deep rumbling screams as it
tore through its design.
Here.
Where the earth had
swallowed fifteen thousand lives,
it is the ocean that whispers
with memory and regret
the warning-
"This too will change."
Only the most serious listener could hear.
Disaster had stopped this steady rhythm.
The rhythm had resumed
and a wiser, more experienced ocean speaks.
Each day the sun strips
away the gray shroud,
each night the ghosts appear,
each morning mourns.
