The Future Legend of How Rising Seas
Drowned Saint Augustine and its Famous Statue
 
By
 
Kaye Linden

The first grain of sand to go slipped unnoticed into the muddy seawater and a high tide washed a small chunk from the base of Ponce de Leon’s statue. Three teenage boys waded to the town plaza, climbed to the top of Ponce’s helmeted head and practiced kissing his cold lips, slapping his face when Ponce didn’t kiss back, and hanging upside down from the old head that bowed in shame at the youthful play. Perhaps Ponce felt jealous of young muscles and flexible limbs, or of the strength to climb statues and throw popcorn and peanuts from his slumped unyoung shoulders. He never did find the fountain, and with the Atlantic tide rising, rising, rising, his steel-boots sucked down further, awash in brine. The boys knew, and Ponce knew, he was going under. Each evening the boys chopped off a finger, a thumb, a toe and the middle finger of the right hand became a tool to gouge out an eye, graffiti the shiny armor with she loves me, she loves me not, and scratch mud daubers and wasps from Ponce’s ears. They cut off one earlobe with the sawing up and down, down and up motion of a hacksaw, laughing at the crumbling little man as he lost one appendage at a time. The boys removed the mighty sword from the gallant gentleman and toppled his head with the blade in a decapitation celebration, the step-by-step ritual of taking a great warrior down. Water washed over Ponce’s knees while grains of stone fell away from the foundation in greater and greater chunks until Ponce leaned over upside down, headless shoulders standing in water. One evening, the boys stretched out drunk, across the rubble, across the broken fingers and toes, over the scraps of Ponce’s heroic eyes, those eyes that once upon a time surveyed the fertile flowering of La Florida where surely his immortality lay.
 
The water rose and rose and rose during the hurricane of 2019, a category six travesty, off the grid, never before witnessed, never before seen by the boys who drowned that night, never before seen by the city of Saint Augustine that drowned that night, never before seen by Ponce de Leon, whose hopes for a bright future drowned that night in rising seas.
 



 *Newspaper article that inspired the prose poem: "Sea Rise Threatens Florida Coast but No Plan." The Gainesville Sun 11 May 2015, 298th ed.: n. pag. Web www.gainesville.com.

Kaye holds an MFA in fiction from the Whidbey Island Writers Workshop and is currently studying for an MFA in poetry at Lindenwood University in Saint Louis. She is current poetry editor, past short fiction editor and general editor with the Bacopa Literary Review, teacher of short fiction at Santa Fe College, assistant editor for Soundings Review, previous judge for Spark Anthology, and past medical editor for “epresent learning lecture reviews.” Kaye’s published books include Prasanga in the Underground World, Tales from Ma’s Watering Hole, Ten Thousand Miles from Home, and 35 Tips for Writing a Brilliant Flash Story, available on all book sites. Visit Kaye at www.kayelinden.com