The Tide

---

I felt the damp air
chilling my skin

My aperature narrowed
I know what this means

The raw texture of anxiety
begins its ascent

Thoughts race

Kill the ignition
Let the engine go quiet

The roar
of my own effort
silenced

---

The Sea

---

My sight is of no use now
Drop the grand narrative


Silence


Heavy listening
—silence



Listening to the hull
floating in stillness



I could hear the sea as if to speak
You do not need the sky clear to survive this
Just inhabit the cloud of unknowing for five seconds more

Along This Shore
— Another way of knowing arrives

---

— the white veil

became my eyes
I could see through listening

—dark laps of the sea

against the hull
For a moment
my heart borrowed
the sea’s rhythm

It had been keeping time

long before I knew
I would need it

—the microscopic
hiss of tiny droplets
finding the hull

Its intricate patterning
reminded me
the world
is elegantly woven

—far off, hidden entirely by the white wall,
a bell buoy tolls

Its lonely cadence assured me there are markers out there

—the cry of a lone gull cuts through the fog somewhere overhead

a sound illuminates
the way a life
continues to navigate
through obscurity
even in fear

—the ghostly echo
of the deep throuhg a faint thrumming
carried over the water —
a distant propeller of a massive ship
miles away, entirely out of sight

Magnitude
announces itself differently
in fog
I stayed still
I stayed small
The giants passed in the dark

The sea remained

I was no longer waiting

for the fog to lift

I determined

I would stay

---

A lantern for the crossing

---

The sea remained audible
long before it became visible