The sea rearranged itself
like the cosmos changing its arena
reassembling the concrete nouns into
other forms, still present but unrecognisable
When it came it was not like Hokusai's
painting, nor from any film we had seen, it was slow, low and steady
a stealth of black water, cold and
carrying our lives
It was a death within life
and we had not seen it upon our palms,
nor in any dream
The worst was seeing the mothers,
waiting through the night
for the children they said must be up
in the mountains and would come down soon
when things were safe
We learnt that day that nothing is ever
safe
