I could send a message in a bottle and someday it would get somewhere. The danger is that it might be intercepted somewhere along the way – before it left shore or passing innocently by. It might get caught up in a storm and get bashed along some rocks. Messages in bottles cannot see lighthouses. It might bob along next to a boat, keeping a lone sailor compnay and making friends along the way. Maybe it would get used to the warm Mediterranean and contract hypothermia when it hit the Atlantic. What if it doesn’t fit through the Straits of Gibraltar? My bottle would get confused navigating the islands in this sea, but it would enjoy their often and spontaneous appearance. The Atlantic would be vast and lonely, a never-ending tempest of fierce waves and wind.
And when it is most hopeless – it is not a mirage my bottle sees – there are islands, mere rocks really. Weather-worn protrusions: renegades from the depths of Poseidon’s realm. The first signs of promise, a new life, reception. My bottle might find a home, a caring reader to love and cherish my message, my message sent from so far away. Sea, ocean, land. Send it down a river. My message of longing, of knotted trunks, of olive trees and greying doves and a stinging sea.
Sand that pushes back against your feet: do not tread here. Ruins of battlements: do not claim here. Waiting patiently but ever-moving, ever-changing. Here the sea will ahve its way and rocky cliffs will it once more face, their views unobstructed by the temporary imposition of civilization.
She will have her way.
And my message will remain the same and here I’ll be, sending it over and over again until each wave carries it away and back again farther than my eyes can see. Until someone sende my message back to me.
My tide will go, a new tide will come.
by audrey. 