Reef-wrecked

by Shaun Lawton

     The idea of a new land becomes troublesome in my mind when I think of all we worked together to achieve. Now it seems the enemy which has invaded us were encoded to do so from a long ago time. The enemy within has flowered upon us now that this portion of the executable program has commenced. After the dory had fallen apart beneath us and the engine had sunk to the smooth rippled sands nestled below in the pitch dark waters of the Atlantic sea, we were all forced to swim across the black, churning water. Of course we'd snorkeled and scuba dived through these waters during the day. At night when the moon was out if was a different story. The fact you couldn't see a damn thing below the waterline merely added to the tension. We swam toward shore. We calculated the reef's edge to be about a dozen yards away or so. There was a tide rippling in over the tops and because it was dark enough out not to see where an inlet through the coral reef might allow access to the beach, we kept our hands reaching out in front of us while we propelled ourselves through the dark. The water was not that cold down here in this part of the Caribbean ocean. I glanced away from the shore toward the skyline and the stars sliced off in their arc by the horizon line.

     Up in the crystal clear night, every few moments a shooting star became visible somewhere in my wide peripheral view of the Milky Way revealed above. We kept idle conversation with a nervous undertone in between occasional gasps for air as we swam forward at a reasonable clip, feeling ahead with our hands for the reef. I received my answer as the palm of my right hand during its forward sweep collided against a rough prickly surface which tingled against my skin and suddenly slid out from underneath my grasping fingertips, a smooth and velvety texture rather like a salamander or eel. "Reef!" I called out as some of my companions were discovering for themselves. I heard one of them shout "let's all move to the left until we find an access point," and we did so as we each arrived face to face against the reef in waters that could now be not more than thirty feet deep. Somewhere ahead in the shallower parts in between reefs, starfish were strewn along the bottom upon the white sandy ocean floor interspersed with seaweeds floating up like green ribbons, photosynthetic antennas signaling energy folded down from the Sun god itself.

     Memories we will reconstruct time and again ahead in our lives in a dizzying array of shattered possibilities in which only the chosen few may be rebuilt. We can only look forward to the countless number of sunrises ahead to lighten us up off our feet. To fly headlong forward into the wide open blue sky of our dreams. Knowing we're forging the matter at hand at the molecular level. Developing a balanced relationship with the land so that after the period in which it has given has transpired, we may better survive in the turbulent times of the taking. Our bodies are the conduit through which this ionic exchange balances itself out in a chemical equation that is a synthesis of two powerful elements. Somehow matter itself has been built out of this process and we, as intrinsic biological agents for whom our finest outcome happens to share in the best interests of the planet's ecosystem, most benefit from the well maintained synergistic process of our controlling matter. We have mastered to the highest degrees a host of myriad achievements in the technological arts. Yet we appear to have lagged somewhat behind in the simple objective of having mastered ourselves.