Tidal Wave

Christopher Bernard

1. Tidal Wave

Call it what it was,
that wiped the ear of the ocean out,
shook out the bones of the villages
like matchsticks,
trawled the shoreline of ten thousand miles
and shook souls in their tens of thousands
into its pocket
like a handkerchief
wiping crumbs;
opened its mouth
and lolled its tongue
down the beaches like a salt lick
and swallowed;

the earth belched, obscenely,
and waves
moved out
like the demands
of a collection agency,

mindless, heartless, betraying, like the sea, like the earth.

2. And the Survivors

A small, messy civilization, of fishing boats and mosques,
shack cafes, restaurants, bars, 
bit-off houses made of driftwood, coconut trees, mud, tin, 
with rattlely fences, with vegetable gardens,
a place of ramshackle piers and hut-like shops,
of corrupt town halls, diseased doctor’s offices, unsanitary hospitals, 
like elsewhere: schools that bored kids to death,
filthy police stations with stinking jails, 
roughshod whorehouses, dens of local thugs, rebels, drug lords,
corrals of small-time pirates, sea gypsies, with the occasional paranoid army patrol,
to show who was in charge, nervous rifles gripped at murderous angles,
of pill boxes and barracks, of garages for the less badly  off, of fishing net poles, the drying nets
     strung up 

wiped away by a finger

sunk with scarcely a trace that you, man, that you, woman, child, young, middle-aged, old,
had ever actually been there, 
or what you made, what thing you made
out of sweat and desire, hope, anger, 
love, cunning, envy, will,
now taken back at a shudder of the earth 
that brought forth each one of us
in a freak mood: spinning gossamer
in a pail of sun,
then washing it out
with a hose
when the thunders come.
And the survivors (this time there were survivors)
are stunned.

3. Sea Gypsies

They gather at the edge,
where the sea foam turns to granite.
Why tarry now?
There’s nothing to note,
no scarves, no violins,
sullen looks, earrings,
the sea tar on their heels.

One of them gathers to her
her stolen children.
Another mocks
the curious spectators.
They are free, now, as Christmas,
nothing locks them up;
they will do what they like,
or they will not.
They will make their escape to the faithless sea,
now, while it sleeps.

The boats are furtive,
blank with possibility,
chipped aquamarine.
Silent, they move
beneath the quiet hands
of cloudlike wimples
of sails.