Tsunami
[2008-11-20]

animation: Lisa Roberts
Sydney 2008

sound: Marcus Holden
Sydney 2008

data source: Rupert Summerson
Canberra, Australia 2008

I set up the program
of sea level monitoring in Antarctica
and the Southern Ocean
while I was working at the Antarctic Division.
A team of three of us installed the tide gauge
at Macquarie Island
over a period of three or four days in 1993.
It is a small triumph of engineering
in a very tough environment.

Rupert Summerson
Canberra 2008

The man who set the guage
scribes his finger though the air.
Close to a sine wave
from where I stand
off to the side.
Patterns of the tides,Antarctica.

His smooth gesture seizes
A saw-toothed splutter
Twelve hours on from tsunami
Thousands and
Thousands and
Thousands and
Thousands of
Lives away.

Man's finger stops, drops
arms to his side.
We fill the space with
our breaths drawn -
The awful poetry of ocean's
echoing lament.

Catherine Ryan
Christchurch, New Zealand
September 2008

ESSAY