The Children and the Lighthouse Keeper
In memory of the victims of the Great Tsunami of 2004
Children noticed water pulling back,
past where parents let them wade. As if
the Spirit had filled his cheeks by sucking in,
exposing rocks on shore, boats their fathers
used to fish in early morning hours. They saw
for that moment they could walk to earth’s edge.
Just then, a lighthouse keeper at Point Calimere, edge
of India’s face to ocean, turned to look back
towards bare land he had recently observed and saw
a herd of Indian antelope galloping from the seafront, as
if
they knew they must escape. He remembered his father’s
words when he took this job: Learn from them all, in
time understanding he meant the beasts and birds in
this wildlife sanctuary on Nagapattinam’s edge.
He watched and wished he could ask his father
why five hundred black bucks were bounding back
to woodlands from the coast, climbing the hilltop. If
he told anyone about this strange event he saw,
they would laugh and surely say that what he saw
was the result of living alone so long. He recalled that in
the dead of night, working the late watch, he asked
himself if
he had made the right choice. Naming animals near the
edge
of extinction in his notebook, he prayed for everyone to
put back
nature as it used to be, learn from the animals, listen to
his father.
The children did not get the chance to hear their fathers
shout Run at Patanangala beach, before they saw
black water swallow them, felt their small backs
snap against trees, then sensed nothing. In
minutes, sixty people disappeared from the edge
of Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park. What if
just one had recognized why the flamingos flew, if
leopards had led or elephants picked up fathers
with families to ride their backs to higher ground, edging
out disaster. If only birds had relayed what they saw
beyond the ocean foam, translated water’s pulse in
language humans understood, we would have them back.
The lighthouse keeper, if he learned anything from the
animals, saw
how he must tell of graceful figures who ran farther than
ever before, in
search of that safe edge, never looking back.
- Janice Dabney