W A V E S
From: The Bird in the Waterfall
by Jerry Dennis
drawings by Glenn Wolff

I can hear waves tonight from my living room. Our house is a few hundred yards from Lake Michigan, on the east shore of a peninsula where east winds strong enough to build large breaking waves are unusual. But tonight the wind is strong and the waves are big. They come in cadence, the largest of them building to a peak and pausing, their power suspended for a moment in a silent heaving purl before they crash. They break with a hydraulic thump sudden as an ax blow, making the ground shudder, and are followed instantly by a tumbling, swirling rush of released energy that hisses like urgent low voices in a crowd. Intermediate waves run in long lapping strokes the length of the shore, like tongues licking envelopes, their breaking less sudden, announced with preambles. The sounds make me remember nights I have spent in sleeping bags on other beaches. Waking on a warm summer night to the rhythm of waves is as reassuring, you can imagine, as the sounds of breathing and heartbeat to a fetus in the womb. Maybe we remember it somehow. Maybe hearing waves in darkness awakens us to our beginnings.

The waves that break against the shores of oceans and lakes were here long before our beginnings. They have been here as long as there has been liquid water and wind to loan it energy. They are energy, traveling through water the way sound travels through air. They are energy made audible and visible and set in motion, a rippling of water's muscles.

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Last Modified: November 27, 2006 7:34 PM