Low Tide

You need not knock.
The house knows how to breathe
when no one insists.

Old age has dimmed my sight

Evening has set the table with its ordinary light.
The door stays where it is, as if saying

Wrap me gently with your intent...

 

I take the long way across the room,
so the floorboards can settle

Who owns the crumbs of dust looms
before my weight weaves to pass

The mantle of the hearth,

The tintype photos of a groom

 

Outside, the water learns the shore
by leaving it alone. Receding
Returning without proof of what it learned before

 

A gull waits on a post, by the fence
by the path you walked to my front door

He perches balanced, not hungry.
The wind moving past as if pursuit was nothing before.

I have learned the patience of windows.
They do not follow the weather.
In their panes, they hold a place for it.

And if you pass that way once more, you will be seen.

As if by me but no, the glass remains clear,

and I am here, but you are not.

 

In the garden, some plants lean toward warmth,
others close early. No one corrects them.

The fence stands. The gate remembers its hinge.

Night arrives without argument.

Stars appear where they are able,
The dark does not demand confession or presence

Just so, I leave the light on in one room

It is not a signal—just a kindness...

Fear knows no darkness that it shuns

When you come near—
or don’t—the tide keeps its time.

Nothing is taken.
Nothing is lost.