the tide rises, the tide falls | an oceanic literary magazine
Time and Tide
by
Louise Longson
I have become something sharp
smoothed by sea
rough edges rubbed
into soft-
sanded
nacreous scars
shimmering
striae stretched
frayed sailcloth
sanded
a hagstone hole
where winds whistle
through
whittled whalebone
written on by time
scrimshawed
jetsam stranded
lodged in the rock-
pools with kelp
and bladderwrack
for company
waiting for the ebb-
tide flow
into the deep
where the waves
know me
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West Oxfordshire poet Louise Longson, widely published in print/online, authored chapbooks 'Hanging Fire' (Dreich, 2021) and 'Songs from the Witch Bottle' (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). She won the Kari-Ann Flickinger Memorial Prize 2023 with soon-to-be-published collection 'These are her thoughts as she falls'. She was Pushcart Prize nominated in 2023.