the tide rises, the tide falls | an oceanic literary magazine

sea pebbles
glistening in the sun...

There is no next step. The sea walls us in.
We have run out of meanders, freshwater...

Shell Island is not an island
and there are not many shells...

Walking down the street,
I empty my pockets...

She has vacationed a moment too long.
Spent months trying to meditate on...

The woman stands still in the sand,
She can see the coastline from here...

If he trips, he gets back up. We run dunes
together, dashing through sunlit patches...

Gloucester, Mass. August 2012.
I brought you here because I knew...

Piles of oyster shells bleached white from the sun
sit next to marsh grown green with algae...

The darkness hangs more thickly,
drapes black silence where...

and she doesn’t look like Gillian at all
when I tell her...

She pulls it up, then twists it down,
A taxi honks, she bears a frown...