....and then the tsunami comes in a wave.
Say goodbye to an era, the opening door, mocked assuredness walking out, and into the blaze of daylight. You’ve found yourself on the hot sand of a vast beach beside the impossible infinity of ocean.
I’m finally where I choose to be. Although there’s no leave from the madness of this island.
The shadows, and things that lurk, like Creepy Crawlies, you know these things all too well; the cruel lessons of life, of childhood as an orphan. Roll the rotting log of the felled tree in a dense forest, this is more the stuff of nightmare, the part of the nervous system that retreats from a sudden sharp pain. The occupants of darkness in a moldering moist forest floor, give their dirty work its due.
All the while the relentless ocean, crashes on and consumes all; all deeds, all passion.
The island is really about time; all we can stand on, the only place we exist. It’s like a fossil in amber, this time - if only I had a word for it. We are all its trapped passengers, traveling in time; a journey one never realizes taking. You cannot leave the fuselage, don’t even try it. To be like a bug, although exotic, perhaps it thought it was escaping. At times this forever lost creature is found in unworldly colors, a specimen of insect, resembling an alien from outer space, long extinct. Scientific papers will be written. However, the evidence is all there. We are no more than this creature.
And the waves make their sounds; as a symphony accompanies me. Modest entreaties of the universe, the brushing of sand - how feminine is the creator; relentless and cruel, always. But then docile is her encumbrance, the surrender of ephemeral castles by the knights of Europe bearing the impossible standard of kings.
Then the birds depart, wanting no more of it. The dreams of vanity, carried skyward by the smoke, the fire and ice of a world that exhales, the eddies of regret that still lurk. An ice floe journeys to certain death.
I will never know the drawing rooms of Europe, the art of great painters, the lust of empire.
And yes, I was once a child, but now am a man. The blue-green vastness of deep surround all I will know. The smothering of death; as a pearl is tucked away, somewhere in a silky web. A steely sward lain in its sheath - ‘Tell him my goodbye.’ - if only I could speak the words, much less think them, aloud.
The future, placed in a safe, a secret code, beeps out in space. If you can hear it now, safeguard your plans; the interest, and thereby the riches of such and such an attic holds, a box for future withdrawals, vivid memories, and sentiments of sentience. The universe keeps its fortune in a fortress of mystery.
You must know yourself before it’s too late.
And so much to carry, you think to yourself, it’s a burden, really, with a bag of stolen silver bars; once carried by ship from the vaults of kingdoms. Guard your combination jealously when the time comes. We steal our fortunes, only to have them thieved away; this thief called time - hearts or mettle, fire and ice.
Cross currents of disapprobation run in the miner’s veins of my young man’s body unaccustomed to this way of life, this island, this time. Even the technology of a hand-held mirror, now hardly known, but my deceased victim had it in his ramshackle cabin in the forest in a space marked both by sap and graves and old newspapers from some mainland I could hardly fathom if I had the inclination or ability to read the written word.
I didn’t incline to wonder. But instead I began to run. What a strange invention is a newspaper. -I would have thought to myself.
Release your heavy load. The wind will carry the smoke from burning vanities; the city in Venice survives to this day.
My father was a sailor from what would one day be called Europe. And he counted his mettle. I amazed in it when I first discovered it.
A forgetting, sure and diabolical, past day, past life, is in the sigh of the wind. Assure us of every change of path. Shall I read the ratty pages of a private journal? (I cannot read!) A shipman’s diary; such-and-such a star on such-and-such a date. ‘We are far from the cares of the city.’ - and all that, notated dutifully.
My wonder is the forest deeps; we can only question what we know, even imperfectly. Like a wandering bird's fleeing the ocean waves, that rushes to escape, then realizes; there’s no place to go. The melodramatic sounds of the chimes, distant but still, ringing my newfound guilt. “What price to murder your own father?” - the chimes inquire.
I heard a human voice that knows no language, then realized it was my own.
The water’s numbing cold caresses my feet, the sting of departure, visions of the dead. The clouds, after a violent, chilling rainfall, rush towards a Europe as unknown to me as the surface of Mars. Then the New World is simply what remains in the storm’s wake.
James Legare 7-25-23