On this shore, it's nearly winter; the tourists         have left. Only the locals now, walking their dogs or sprinting along the shore.         Volunteers wander the bridges, skirt the river,  tracking with mobile phones         and apps the paths water might follow—  tidal pools, inlets, spontaneous streams          rising in the aftermath  of heavy  rainfall  and nor'easters. Maximum         inundation levels are higher each year. Citizen survey as dress rehearsal:        a watery finale made of all the scenes in disaster movies like the one where        a woman gives up her seat on a rescue helicopter to reconcile with her father.         The two of them together face  a megatsunami that wipes out all         of Virginia Beach and the east coast. Sometimes I also dream of walls of water,        the moon's unblinking eye the only  blessing above. Afterwards, every salt        cathedral washed clean or ground to sand. No one has seen this kind of film:         rice terraces and temples dissolve;  and sugarcane fields in the delta. What god        would survive to pelt water with rock and clay so islands rise again? An archipelago        inked like the first sentence in history;  and we, rowing our fragile craft. The sea        is always there, was always there.  Even when they're not calling to water, our        bodies, made of 70% water, call to water.