High Tide Line
After my emotional storm
I stoop to examine the high tide line.
Muscles tense knee to hip
As I pick over the flotsam and jetsam.
Fingering and thinking.
Lank weed tangles around smooth pebbles, waterworn;
Rattling shells lifeless, deserted;
Muck and tar and cast away leavings.
Torn, ribboned, exposed and naked:
My life’s recent edges.
Close scrutiny shocks and fascinates.
Running minutiae of moments, grains of sand,
Between throbbing fingertips,
Aware of each loop and swirl,
Of ridges, of hard and soft.
I feel them keenly.
They cut like glass splinters,
Embed into my consciousness.
Make me bleed.
Too long in the ocean, saltwater has weighed me down.
Weakened. Washed up.
Stranded at the edge.
My high tide line.