Tsunami
28 May 2022
Can you feel the tsunami building?
Each year rolls out day after day. All the debris and keepsakes of one's life get swept along, sucked up in the wave of time: smiles, laughter, anger, the taste of ice-cream, harsh and kind words alike, a kiss, a death, a birth, an old letter long forgotten-now reclaimed from the bottom of a drawer, dreams, and the smell of a bonfire. These things and more, jostle and bang along, tumbling in the strong tides of the days, weeks and months passing.
One races to keep ahead of the building wall of time behind him. The seasons roll out, then the half year marker recedes into the past. In an instant the sweet days of spring and summer are gone, the day-light hours shortening minute by minute. As October wanes, the year's mountain of moments towers behind us. We furtively glance over our shoulder and quicken our pace to keep ahead of the roiling, frothing wall lapping at our heels.
There, just ahead of us, the year's final holidays sit like straw huts on the shore, bracing for the inevitable crash of the tsunami. They are doomed to be swept away, and in the aftermath will litter the inland landscape of the new year.