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
