Salt Hours

The tide pulls its silver hem across the flats, leaving behind a gloss of sky on sand, and I am the only witness to this slow unveiling.

Driftwood arranges itself in sentences I almost understand — syntax of current and collision, each planed surface a word worn down to its vowel.

There was a house once, set back from the dune grass, where light entered every room like a guest who refuses to sit down, restless at each window.

I have carried its rooms with me, their particular silence, the way a door left open lets the whole Atlantic lean against the hallway wall.

Now the salt hours pass unmarked except by the plovers stitching their quick tracks into the margin of the shore — small, provisional, exact.