The Ocean Doesn’t Rise Alone

There was once a town by the sea.
Children drew lines in the sand.
Now the lines are gone.
Now the children float.

The surface burned before we noticed.
The currents slowed before we cared.
Oxygen slipped from the ocean’s breath
and the algae bloomed in silence.

The glaciers cracked behind the satellites.
Greenland cried from underneath.
Antarctica bled in silence
while we watched another screen.

The AMOC began to stumble.
The Gulf Stream lost its path.
Fish rose belly-up in tropic bays.
The coral turned to ash.

Then came the inch. The foot. The meter.
Salt in the fields. Salt in the wells.
The rice refused to grow that year.
And no one rang the bell.

Jakarta, gone.
Lagos, gone.
Tuvalu washed from memory.
Bangladesh in boats.
Florida in flight.
And Hamburg’s harbor in mourning.

Children sleep in tents on dams.
Schools drift with the tides.
Storms come like broken clocks.
Nothing grows where the tide once stopped.

We named the oceans.
We mapped the lines.
We ignored the warnings.
We ran out of time.

Now the ice remembers more than we do.
Now the sea reclaims its debt.
Now the wind brings back what we forgot—
and no one stands to weep.

We sang about the ocean.
We watched it rise.
But the ocean doesn’t rise alone.

It takes.
It takes.
And it remembers.