Tide Ledger

Before dawn, the harbor counts in copper light, ropes breathing salt into the wrists of posts, a gull's cry stitching white seams through fog, and the water turning pages no hand can hold.

Crates sweat cedar and far-off rain. Names in chalk blur into soft constellations. A forklift hums like a low brass note, while oranges roll their sun across the planks.

An old woman opens her coat to the wind, lets it search the pockets for vanished addresses. Her face is a map of crossings and returns, each line a road that learned the shape of weather.

By noon, the tide erases what it carried in. Still, on the stones, a shine remains, as if every departure leaves a thin gold dust, as if the sea keeps books in a language of light.