Salt and Timber

The dock pilings stand in low tide, barnacled and blackened where the water laps, each one a calendar of salt — rings no one reads anymore.

A fisherman's glove, stiffened on a nail, still curls around the shape of rope. Wind off the channel fills it like a hand remembering its work.

The boathouse lists. Its shingles peel in tongues of cedar, speaking the slow dialect of weather — how rain undoes what hands have built and builds what hands cannot.

Somewhere a bell buoy tilts and sounds, not warning, not welcoming, just marking the place where deep becomes deeper, where the harbor opens its mouth to the Atlantic.

I stand where the planks go soft, where rust has married every bolt, and think how beautiful a thing becomes when it is halfway given back.