Salt Meridian

The tide keeps its own calendar, scratching days into the basalt with a nail of foam.

I walked the salt meridian at dusk, where the continent forgets its name and the water takes over like a conversation you can't leave.

Driftwood arranges itself into sentences I almost understand — something about patience, something about the slow work of becoming smooth.

A cormorant folds against the last seam of light, stitching the horizon shut. I stay until the thread pulls through.

What the ocean returns is never what it took: a glass knob, a hull plank, the,verb of a wave worn down to its noun.