TSUNAMI DAY

I watched a documentary about a mega tsunami the other day. It went into great detail about what would happen if one of the Canary Islands erupted and fell into the Atlantic.

It's happened before apparently. Shells were found two hundred feet above sea level, carried there by a giant wall of water moving at 500 miles per hour across the ocean. If it happened again, it would be really bad news for places like Lisbon, Casablanca, West Africa and the Coast of Cornwall, not to mention the whole of the Eastern Seaboard.

I found it fascinating. Not the devastation. When a tsunami hits, the water punches through everything it finds, rolls inland and then gets sucked back out to sea again, taking the world with it. The devastation is unimaginable. What I find fascinating is that moment of anticipation before it hits. What do you do? How do we respond when faced with the raw, inevitable power of nature?

Then, I get round to thinking that there are some things that are equally as unstoppable - tsunamis in our own lives that change the world forever, sweeping in and raking out and leaving a trail of destruction behind them. How does it feel, the moment before it hits? How does it feel knowing that it's coming?

I thought I'd write a poem. Here it is.

Tsunami Day

The ocean breathes
The sea inhales
A final gasp of air
The shiny stones
The naked sand
Laid flat and wet and bare

The water, dragged
Far out to sea
Beneath the burning sun
Where eerie silent
Skies proclaim
Tsunami Day has come

The thin blue lined
Horizon swells
And glimmers in the light
The horses roar
Atop the wave
In cataracts of white

They pound their way
Toward the shore
The rushing water grows
A wall of monstrous
height and speed
That no-one living knows

Obscure the sky
And dim the earth
Blink out the shining sun
I stand upon
The waiting sand
Tsunami Day has come