The Reclamation of the Coast

The tide pulls back its salt-cracked tongue, leaving the shingle to the gulls and the cold. The boardwalks are skeletal now, stripped of the summer’s frantic, sticky heat, and the carousel horses are frozen mid-gallop.

In the boarded-up windows of the saltwater taffy shop, the reflection of the gray Atlantic churns, a mirror for the clouds that weigh heavy and low. Sand drifts against the weathered cedar siding, burying the ghosts of footprints left in August.

There is a music in the wind through the pier pilings, a low, resonant thrumming that the tourists never heard. It speaks of the long dark and the iron-colored water, of the way the land prepares itself for silence, and how the sea, at last, reclaims its own.