Water off a duck's back

Our walk this afternoon was along the River Arun.  We met this baleful looking duck - some swans - and a couple of kayakers.   It was a lovely Spring afternoon.  The River was Danube blue - really high too.  Spring tides.

So I was thinking about the power of water and the tsunami in Japan.  The videos we have seen are chilling - especially the ones with the tsunami alarms screaming and screaming as the irresistible sea comes surging in.

One of my favourite childhood poems is Jean Ingelow's "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire".   They had no videos back then, but how well she conveys the horror of it all to us in words. Especially how fast that water comes.

So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
The heart had hardly time to beat
Before a shallow seething wave
Sobb’d in the grasses at oure feet:
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,
And all the world was in the sea.

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