The Power of Water

“Don’t turn your back on the water...” my grandmother told me as I skimmed stones across the tiny ripples of rock pools. Small scaly creatures and stones sliced toes like knives but we were full of excitement then, craning necks and nets at the alien life under water that swilled any blood away in a salty sting. Until that day. My rock pool filled with tears/spit/teeth from savaged parents covered and muddied by seaweed from miles out - dragged against flotsam and jetsam from the seabed. It all tipped endlessly into my rock pool in a careless hurry/rush/smash like workmen at skips. I went back to those pools and streams, like tears, crawling from the lake. Found it was lost and drowning within its own water: a roof slate, a car, a swing from along the coast. A doll’s head that just bobbed and plopped. It would have been sucked and spat upward, surging towards the sky with plastic arms praying, in the deluge just moments (days?) before. It’s not my rock pool anymore. It’s not our town. People killed by geography: Subduction – Subtraction of me from my family. Subsidence - Insidious silence that lulled people to exposed sand with palm trees over heads like question marks… before the wave even Noah would struggle to sail. Tsunami… you and me. “Don’t turn your back on the water...” my grandmother told me