In memory of the victims of the
Great Tsunami of 2004
Children noticed water pulling back,
past where parents let them wade. As if
the Spirit had filled his cheeks by sucking
in,
exposing rocks on shore, boats their
fathers
used to fish in early morning hours. They
saw
for that moment they could walk to earth’s
edge.
Just then, a
lighthouse keeper at Point Calimere, edge
of India’s
face to ocean, turned to look back
towards bare
land he had recently observed and saw
a herd of Indian
antelope galloping from the seafront, as if
they knew they
must escape. He remembered his father’s
words when he
took this job: Learn from them all, in
time
understanding he meant the beasts and birds in
this wildlife
sanctuary on Nagapattinam’s edge.
He watched and
wished he could ask his father
why five hundred
black bucks were bounding back
to woodlands
from the coast, climbing the hilltop. If
he told anyone
about this strange event he saw,
they would laugh
and surely say that what he saw
was the result
of living alone so long. He recalled that in
the dead of
night, working the late watch, he asked himself if
he had made the
right choice. Naming animals near the edge
of extinction in
his notebook, he prayed for everyone to put back
nature as it
used to be, learn from the animals, listen to his father.
The children did not get the chance to hear
their fathers
shout Run
at Patanangala beach, before they saw
black water swallow them, felt their small
backs
snap against trees, then sensed nothing. In
minutes, sixty people disappeared from the
edge
of Sri Lanka’s
Yala National Park. What if
just one had recognized why the flamingos
flew, if
leopards had led or elephants picked up
fathers
with families to ride their backs to higher
ground, edging
out disaster. If only birds had relayed what they saw
beyond the ocean foam, translated water’s
pulse in
language humans understood, we would have
them back.
The lighthouse
keeper, if he learned anything from the animals, saw
how he must tell
of graceful figures who ran farther than ever before, in
search of that
safe edge, never looking back.
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