Allegory of the coastal town
10 o'clock, May 19, 2005
The sea level is rising. We all know this. Some day, maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but some day soon, in the lifetimes of many of us, the waves will overtop the sea wall, the dikes will burst, and our town, this beautiful town, once the wonder of the coast, will finally be swept away.
Some of us, the elders of the town, have lived here all their lives. They’ve seen the other coastal towns go under, one by one; they’ve traveled, some of them, to the rich inland cities and found no welcome there for our people. They are in no hurry to die, but if they must die, they would rather die here, in the town they helped build, the town where they once prospered, that has sheltered and supported them all their lives.
For others, the town’s young people, the town is already lost to us in our minds — not unmourned, not unregretted, but lost, nevertheless. We have known since we were children that it would be in our time that the ocean would come. We have never dreamed, as some of our elders have, that by some miracle the wonders of the old town would be restored. We have no wish to die here. We would rather build a new town on higher ground — smaller, no doubt; meaner, perhaps, by the standards of our elders; but a place where we can raise our children, and perhaps tell them stories of the grand coastal town that gave our people birth.
But now our elders would set us to filling sandbags, would take the timber we need to build our new town and use it to shore up the levees, would ask us to stand with them and plug the holes in the dikes with our fingers when we should be carrying our children to safety.
All to add a few more years to the life of the town that all of us, young people and elders alike, know cannot be saved.
I figure a raft village is our best bet.