Salt Liturgy

The tide pulls its long syllable across the flats, erasing what the morning wrote in kelp and foam.

I have watched this liturgy for years— the sea's slow genuflection, its refusal to remain.

Each wave deposits something it no longer needs: a crab's pale gauntlet, glass worn to the green of sleep, the wood that was a door in some country the current has forgotten.

My pockets fill with residue. I carry home the salt of distant breakings, arrange them on the sill where light performs its own small archaeology.

Nothing stays. And still the water returns, pronunciation perfect, its one word laid again across the shore— the sound of something learning how to let go.