The Salt Marsh Clock

The tide retreats with a click, leaving behind the glass of shallow pools, where egrets stand like punctuation marks against the receding page of the bay.

Gold spills from the hem of the clouds, bruising the cordgrass into violet shadows, as the smell of brine and old earth rises in a slow, humid breath.

No wind disturbs the mirror here, only the sudden ripple of a hidden fin, a secret written in silver circles that vanish before they are read.

The sun sinks into the muck, extinguishing its copper torch, while the first stars pin the sky to the heavy, velvet dark of the grass.