AUSTRALIA | Tuesday, 30 September 2014 | Views [121] | Comments [1]
Looking west from Bluff Knoll, Stirling Range NP, WA
The typical tidal range, or difference in sea level between high and low tides, in the open ocean is about 2 ft (0.6 m), but it is much greater near the coasts.—Desk encyclopaediaOur beach was never so bare. Freak tide, system fault, inhuman error, will it never stop falling? After dark, said the tables of high water and sunset pasted on the wall, which don’t deceive. Come on down for a walk while there’s light. A wall of pale green glass miles above head high alongside, complete with fish crossing, is what will have been the wave once it has broken. Leviathan is the beached cachalot we left Bob Falla filleting for science, the ebb to wash away these fifty years, each one smaller than the last. Come down, this is today delivered factory fresh, in colour heated by the late sun. Time to try looking on the bright side, or join those Great God! (says the poem) who’d rather be suckled in a creed outworn: but whose cast-off cult’s to be the lucky one? Great waters, unfinished business, done blind to the deadline. From that rock, to this tree was tapu and it sticks. Thin pickings, Tangaroa, this is pakeha story time, only Okeanos and sister Tethys having it off; the way they love makes hairy cliff-hanging seas roll drums on the sand, the 3-metre swell flat on the seabed bangs the pubes, very ancient and fishlike they smell close to. Divine all the same. Dangerous, not to be approached, least of all by mortal man whose years are four-score plus tomorrow night. While I count the three strong swimmers carried past out of sight round the North Rocks the whole shoreline shakes underfoot again, dead friends call out not to be heard. Look west, what looks back is blood-orange nightfall, the stooped sky drowning another sun overboard where the horizon was: till it snapped those deep-sea moorings and will be heard oncoming, the sound of a scream, tsunami! tsunami! splintering deadwood of the boat I lost half a life ago, swept away with a judgment on the work she’s amateur built but your friends won’t know. Last seen, one inflatable rescue craft stood on its tuck, bows to skyward in fast failing light, a turning tide.
Allen Curnow Oct 26, 2014 10:27 AM
