Pattie McCarthy
intertidal ordinary

 

I should say something about water

your feet cold in it

 

hunting for dulse

on an afternoon turned

 

hotter than expected
the boy puts a conker in the walk archive

 

& the season turns from shells
a coast becomes longer the closer

 

one looks at it — you turn
me inside out with your mouth

 

 

 

& the boy with a crab in his hand

left his heart in a fish & in his hand

 

a fishhook & beneath his feet

several feet of air between

 

his body & the working wharf
I take the photo from far away so

 

the girl is just a speckle for scale

not herself but rather a landscape

 

marker in the intertidal where we

are permitted to fish fowl & navigate

 

 

 

 

the law is unsettled as to whether

fowling includes birdwatching

 

the image is my daughter
her hands overwhelmed with hermit crabs

 

her rashguard a makeshift
pocket overflowing with hermit crabs

 

the high tide an unusual ten feet

going out fast & the crabs everywhere

 

a perigean spring is king & even

the ebb of a king tide is dramatic

 

 

 

 

skeletal wrought
iron light on the neck

 

people in love walk
too slowly           we agreed

 

equinox to solstice

attached please find

 

beginning at stake &

stones running six rods

 

together with all tide water

together with all tide water

 

a fast slack water
village bunting is contagious

 

maximum autumn mom

english for an estuary

 

rejectamenta the wrack

leaves behind high & low

 

tide lines & the boy pops

the brown float bladders

 

knotted spiral & toothed

leaves the holdfast attached

 

the season is the air

near water full of crows

 

& seagulls.       the trees

full of crows & one

 

osprey the neighbor

calls a fishhawk

 

the season is the way

the air tastes of crow

 

calls & salt

the long fetch of the waves

 

 

 

 

the walk archive achieves

through accumulation — the soft

 

paths mossy or midden

yield a bit to each foot

 

each sweet thud        the walk

ends where the water

 

begins — water
is challenging archival material

 

I bit my lips but

the crows cawed

 

 

 

 

the king tide is a spring

tide that has nothing

 

to do with the season

this prediction is historic

 

not harmonic

low tide history

 

reveals a delicate weave

& when the tide is half in

 

the mud mirrors clouds

call it a half tide space

 

assume me to be a vengeful

ghost       not one who urges

 

you to fall in love again

do not — miss me forever

 

instead        the tidepool

is only discrete at low tide

 

swamp me the rest of the time
the water was cold & the children

 

were brave         counting down

three two one & jump

 

 

 

 

 

off the wharf into a king tide
which was warmer near the top & so

 

we floated as long as we could until

the cold under water swelled up

 

waves grind their edges — I'm in

the library's skirts — the water

 

shimmers like skin & like

the skin of it I

 

expand to the limits of what

ever time I'm given 

 
 
 
Found In Volume 49, No. 05
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  • pattie mccarthy
Pattie McCarthy
About the Author
Pattie McCarthy’s seventh book of poems, wifthing, is forthcoming from Apogee Press in 2020. She is a non-tenure track associate professor at Temple University, where she teaches literature and creative writing.