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Tide

Oz Hardwick

I had become, by then, used to the strange,
over-familiar with the chaos and metamorphosis
that had become the almost tiresome norm.

There had been warnings: Scientists predict;
If we don’t change now; Our last chance,
but no-one listened or, if they did, no-one heard.
Those same warnings had rung out for decades-
decades in which millennial prophecies proliferated,
and predicted apocalypses came and went
with bland frequency. Newspapers reported
the occasional whale in the Thames, sheep
with two heads, a Kali child with spider limbs,
but they were brief distractions, page-fillers
for lazy tabloids. There was always something
more serious: the potential boiling point of countries
just beyond the borders of popular imagination;
or, ever present, the economy - who’s getting more
than their fair share? Who’s getting your share?

And as we fretted over fat cats siphoning off
the richest cream, and a shadowy underclass
bleeding the country dry, who noticed for more
than a moment when the light-hearted item
at the close of the teatime news became darker,
more primal, more biblical? When starlings fell
from clear sky, or when dust the colour of blood
scabbed on cars and windows, the office gossip
was full of it, but by lunchtime it was forgotten.

So it barely piqued my curiosity when,
bundling home one February evening after
an uneventful day at the office, I saw that a shape
I’d taken to be a bin bag from a distance
was actually a seal. Such things had happened a lot
a few months previously, but stories had slipped
from the news as viewers lost interest, needing
new distractions. That we were seventy or more
miles from the sea didn’t even cross my mind-
I just wanted to get home, get warm, and eat.

But as I was passing, it half rose up and looked
directly at me. We’ve all seen the photos,
and the streetlight glinted in those inkwell eyes,
familiar from Sunday supplements and greetings cards,
that seemed to study me with intelligence, and even
compassion. It wasn’t an epiphany, as such, but
for a couple of minutes we were still, looking
at each other. I hadn’t noticed until then
that it was raining, very gently. I raised my face,
parted my lips, tasting the metallic sharpness.
I watched a bright drip bulb out and drop
from one of the seal’s whiskers. Perhaps
I should have said something but, blasé
as I’d become, I didn’t expect talking animals.
So I just stood, until it slowly lowered its head
back to the pavement, closing its eyes. I’d like
to draw some moral, some significance, but
after a last look at its dark form, I carried on home.

But I did think about it as I pushed open
my warped wood door, calling a tired greeting
to the emptiness. Then, later, as I caught sight
of my own dead eyes in the bathroom mirror,
I thought of those other eyes, and wondered
if it had been trying to tell me something.

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