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The Assimilation
James Lilliefors
Then came the cheapening,
when even the air and the oceans
seemed to lose value.
Or – could it be they simply lost
interest, as many of us did?
Could it be that the tide, tired
of its same-old with the shore,
went out one night and chose not to return?
And the shore, seeing it had gained ground,
sighed a breath of relief and let the tide go.
Some were astonished, then,
how the wayward tide reappeared,
sowing wild oats in faraway ports:
There were sightings in the Seychelles.
On Bondi Beach. In Maya Bay.
Seaside Heights, New Jersey.
Odes and anthems were penned,
singing the praises of what a tide
could do, and be, when free,
what unsung power it could command.
Only the scientists harbored doubts:
If the tide had really broken free,
wouldn’t it have been swallowed by the sea?
“Assimilated” was the word they preferred.
But the public, skeptical by then
of any five-syllable word, just scoffed,
and waited
to welcome the prodigal tide home.
Gathering nightly by the sea
(even though the sea was within),
giving absence a presence, a value
it never had before.
Waited as if for the flotsam
of their own pasts to drift ashore.
There Will Be Warnings
James Lilliefors
There will be warnings, we were told,
and there were.
But when the first ones came,
we thought they might be something else.
So we waited.
Some warnings rumbled, some warnings roared.
Some came stealthily, silent as sea-rise.
In the suburbs they sometimes shimmered first,
then darkened like locusts, littering lawns
with strange detritus that we quickly raked into piles
and set on fire.
There will be warnings,
we told each other. Better ones.
And there were, stark as summer
snowfall. But even then,
we could not agree
which were warnings
and which were simply changes in the weather.
So we argued.
And the warnings grew
more respectable,
acquiring property,
planting shade trees,
building tents of silence
on their lawns.
And still we told our children
what we’d told each other:
there will be warnings.
And there were.
But by then, having endured
decades of them ourselves,
we also winked a disclaimer:
They are only warnings.