They call her angry
when she rises against the shore,
when her waves climb over one another
and her voice carries inland,
beyond the dunes,
beyond the places where anyone
has thought to listen.
But is it anger?
Or has she simply grown weary
of being misunderstood?
All summer they come to her,
running laughing into her surf,
letting her cool waters
close around their bodies.
They delight in her gentleness.
They call her beautiful.
They leave footprints in the sand
and carry pieces of her home
clinging to their skin.
But who among them
has ever asked
what she remembers?
In her depths
lie the things the world has forgotten.
Memories move along her floor,
rolling over rippled sand,
disturbed by currents
older than the names
we have given her.
Occasionally,
something that once lived
finds its way to her edge.
A shell.
A bone.
The fragile remains
of a life she held
long after the world above
had ceased to remember it.
And when the winds arrive,
when her great body rises
and throws itself against the rocks,
they call it fury.
They hear the thunder
of her breaking waves,
but not the voices
carried within them.
The cries of things lost.
The long, unanswerable
sorrow of the depths.
Perhaps her spray
is not merely water
torn apart by wind.
Perhaps it is memory
rising at last
into the light.
There is something primal
that moves across her surface,
something that existed
long before the first human foot
pressed itself into her sand.
It is there on quiet mornings,
when she lies beneath the sun,
and on nights when the wind
draws her into mountains
of dark, restless water.
It does not disappear
when she becomes gentle.
And still they come,
running into her surf,
laughing as the waves
break around their knees.
They see the water.
They feel its coolness.
They marvel at its beauty.
But how many recognize
the ancient life
moving beneath their hands?
How many understand
that what they call anger
may be the sound
of something enormous
trying to be heard?
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