Someone plants eel-grass September mornings.
I do the dead-man’s float in memory foam.
Fog congeals, grays. Once I rowed a dinghy
against tide I could not out-muscle. Had to land,
wade, pull the boat by its painter. The line
I live on stops at :18 and :46 weekdays.
Some afternoons a bleached moon rises.
Ten thousand vehicles flow past my house.
Moon, no moon, I chart the hours by their whine.
There’s a trick with a spoon and some water.
Do it until the mind goes slack.
This poem “Tides” originally appeared in Of Borders and Bioregions. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 218 (Autumn 2013): 46.
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