Salt Anthem

The tide pulls its white hem back across the flats, exposing what we buried at low water — bottle glass worn to the shape of breathing, a rusted hinge that once held open a door.

Everything the sea returns it returns changed. The shell no longer fits the animal. The rope has forgotten its knot and lies across the rocks like cursive.

I stood here years ago with someone whose name the salt has taken. We watched the cormorants hang their dark wings to dry like flags of a country that no longer exists.

Now the harbor wood is soft with rot, the oyster beds have shifted east, and the light does what it always does — arrives without apology, turns the wet sand into something almost too bright to look at.