Crockett’s Cove, Vinylhaven, Maine, 2007

It’s a mud-ugly world

when the tide recedes.

How comforting.

Nothing in this small bay is hidden.

Not the ooze, nor the scattered rocks

nor the orange-bladdered seaweed they anchor.

Not the blue-black mussels

nor the snails gliding on anything solid.

It’s comforting to know

what holds the water

when it runs full,

as it does twice a day.

I sit in a century-old house

ten feet above high tide

breathing with the moon,

six hours in, six hours out.

I rise and fall, rise and fall,

flooded, then laid bare,

opening to feed,

then closing like the barnacles.

And all the while,

the ducks swim in deeper water,

never hurried, diving now and then

for morsels on the bottom.

All is rightful

and in its proper parts.

I freewheel here.

Life is spacious

and questions grow simple.

Will the offshore fog enshroud us?

Should I jog our dirt road early on

or face the gauntlet of late day

mosquitoes awaiting a blood meal?

Drivenness drops away

and I inhabit a neutral shade of time

that receives anything I shape

with equal grace.