PrintPoem – SMALL BEFORE THE SEA (By Ray Gallucci)
SMALL BEFORE THE SEA
We have only pictures,
A journal and rubble
From what was a fixture
To keep ships from trouble.
A lighthouse, built sturdy,
On Unimak island
Around 1940,
With Coast Guard as client.
Five Guardsmen were manning
The station that morning,
Both horn and beam spanning
The sea with their warning.
At ninety past midnight,
They felt quite a tremor,
But lighthouse stayed upright,
Observers remember.
One half-hour later
Again all was quaking.
Intensity greater,
But no structure breaking.
Unknown at this moment,
Aleutian Trench fell,
Caused ocean to foment
Tsunami from hell!
To radio listener
One Guardsman asserted,
“Since damage resisted,
Post won’t be deserted.”
For next quarter hour,
The island stayed quiet.
None knew of the power
That landward was flying.
Now steel reinforcement
Was lighthouse construction,
Designed as resistant
To seismic destruction.
And base of the station
Rose thirty feet higher
Than waves’ oscillations
Were known to aspire.
The sentinel’s apex
Stood full thirty meters
Above line of breakers —
Impregnable keeper.
But none could imagine
The power released
At three-thousand fathoms
When sea bottom creased!
Once passed twenty minutes
Since Guardsman had spoken,
The radio listener
Heard “roaring from ocean.”
His building was smitten
By thunderous slapping.
Along floor of kitchen
Soon ocean was lapping.
Yet cliff that located
This radio building
Was more elevated
And much farther inland.
By time they recovered
To peer down escarpment,
In horror discovered
Tsunami’s bombardment.
No lighthouse left standing,
Erased to foundation,
And Guardsmen who manned it
Were lost to creation.
Tsunami had crested
At least hundred feet.
The sea had ingested
The station complete!
For month they kept searching
What sea was returning,
But found only portions
Of human internals.
They buried whatever
Near lighthouse’s remnant,
And sixteen years after
Came plaque in remembrance.
Can anyone conjure
The Guardsmen’s last sighting —
That hundred-foot horror
Their beacon was lighting?*
Like matchstick it crumbled
What stood like a fortress.
In seconds it humbled
Our human resources.
And yet to our planet,
No more than a hiccup.
When think we command it,
Earth sends us a wake-up.
The Coast Guard still cautions,
“Can’t vie equally
When Nature comes calling.
We’re small ‘fore the sea!”
(Published in ST. LINUS REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 3, Autumn 2005)
(Based on an article with the same title by PAC Veronica Cady, editor, Coast Guard Magazine, May 2001, about the April 1, 1946, Tsunami at Scotch Cap, Alaska, available online at www.uscg.mil/hq/g‑cp/cb/April2001/scotchcap.html
[*also see artist Danell Millsap’s conceptual painting at nees.orst.edu/IT/info/SlidePic17.htm])
Author Bio:
I am a Professional Engineer who has been writing poetry since 1990. I am an incorrigible rhymer, tending toward the skeptical/cynical regarding daily life. I have been fortunate to have been published in poetry magazines and on-line journals such as NUTHOUSE, MOTHER EARTH INTERNATIONAL, FEELINGS/POETS’ PAPER, MÖBIUS (when Jean Hull Herman published), PABLO LENNIS, MUSE OF FIRE, SO YOUNG!, THE AARDVARK ADVENTURER, POETIC LICENSE, THUMBPRINTS, UNLIKELY STORIES, BIBLIOPHILOS, FULLOSIA PRESS, NOMAD’S CHOIR, HIDDEN OAK, PABLO LENNIS, POETSESPRESSO, SOUL FOUNTAIN, WRITER’S JOURNAL, ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS, DERONDA REVIEW, LYRIC, THE STORYTELLER, WRITE ON! and DANA LITERARY SOCIETY.