At a Tsunami Memorial Sign, Ao Nang Beach
by James Green

It is sunrise.
Longtail boats drift in the shallows,
waiting to ferry tourists to Railay.
Limestone karsts tower into the mist
and beneath them the sea is soft,
a lace of foam dissolving as soon as it forms.

On a walkway by the beach,
where it bends toward the sea,
I stop to read a small blue sign
in Thai and English, a memorial
for those washed away when water rose
without warning from the ocean’s floor
as if commanded in some ancient language.

Tidepools form as aqua tinted water
slides back to the sea and I turn again
to the sign, a quiet hinge between two worlds.

I read the dates again, the way you might
trace a scar to remember its beginning
and I imagine the moment the horizon
folded inward, how the air must have changed–
a pressure, a silence,

and I think how every shore
must keep its own memory, even while
we are only passing through.



 

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