The Tide

Reshaped the shore
through thousands
of imperfect tides

each leaving its own trace
each carrying away what no longer belongs

Storms destroy

time revises

Grief revises

Love revises

Mercy revises

The Sea

The sea never argues
with yesterday’s shoreline

Along This Shore

Cartographic Revision

We do not erase
former terrain
the insistence
belongs to the sea

Soundings now rise where deep water was once recorded

A former channel survives only as a stain beneath the paper

Marsh remembers what the chart forgot

An abandoned pier continues pointing toward absent water

annotated

truth is catching up with memory
the surveyor finally acknowledges it
noticing a tiny shift in the emotional center

amended

written by different hands across different years
suddenly the page has history

stamped

the coast changed long ago

A lantern for the crossing