Driftwood

Somewhere upriver a birch let go of what it no longer needed— a limb stripped pale as bone, surrendered to the current's long persuasion. It traveled without intent, tumbled through gorges where the water speaks in tongues, snagged briefly on a sandbar's lip then carried on. By the time the sea received it the bark was gone, the grain laid bare, each ring a year of standing still now polished to a language only fingers understand. I found it on the tideline among the kelp and broken shell, light enough to lift with one hand, heavy with the scent of distances no map could name. It leans now by the door— neither ornament nor relic, just a piece of what the world could not keep holding and could not let drown.