There is a sound beneath.

Before language.
Before memory.
Before us.

Life was held —
not owned, not named —
held in water, in darkness.

A spark of light.
Restless.
Reaching beyond itself.
Life striving to live.

It multiplied. It travelled.
And as it moved through the world,
it became a body
carrying the memory of its stories within it,
holding the traces of all it had touched.

Some turned toward land.
Others stayed.

Some rose
to hold, to touch,
to wipe the salt from the face of their young
with the softness of their hands.

Others returned to the waterline,
carrying the memory of land into the deep,
holding the darkness as their home.

And there, in stillness,
they felt the cradle-song of tides
and their breath became hum.
Hum became song.

So they sang,
to their young, to life, to one another.

A song that has travelled through oceans,
through distance,
through time.

A sound unbroken…

Seventy-one percent of our home is ocean.

And within it live the great mothers,
guardians of the endless waters,
keepers of the first lullabies.

And still,
through it all,
they keep singing,
moving the ice from beneath the surface.

And sometimes,
if we are quiet,
a whole sea can hear it.

A call from the deep.

Pulsing like a slow, deep drum.

A sound the body remembers.

Our song.

Returning
Rising
with the tide.