High Tide
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The Poem
High Tide
I have been coming here for ten years.This is not nothing.
The pillars are wood.I want to say this plainly —trees that became lumberthat became structurethat became the thing standingbetween the ocean and the shore,between the water and the sky,between who I was ten years agoand who is standing here nowin the same waterlooking at the same light.
Each one says: I’m still here.I say it back.This is the whole conversation.This is enough.
I’m still here
Once a year the sun comes through the portal at the end.Not every day. Not on demand. Once —at the specific angle of a specific morningwhen everything has to be exactly rightfor the light to travel the full lengthand arrive where you are standingif you are standing there,if you came,if you kept coming all the years it didn’t happenso you would be here for the year it did.
This is called faith.This is called ten years of morningsunder a pier that keeps standingin the water that keeps moving over both of youwithout asking permission,without keeping score —just the water, just the light,arriving once a year like an anointingfor everyone presentand the pier itselfwhich receives it the same way it receives everything —standing.
The sun through the portal
The surfers shoot the pier.The commitment of a person on a boardwho sees the gap, feels the timing,knows it is exactly right —and goes.
I watch from the sand.I understand from the sand.The going when you know —the pier has understood thissince before any of us arrived.
One day it may fall.The water is patient the way water is patient —not waiting, just continuing,the daily unremarkable extraordinary workof moving over thingsuntil the things change or don’t.
One day the wood will remember it was a tree.Not today.
The pier is still here.I am still here.The water rushes over us both without distinction —the wood and the person,the structure and the witness —standing in the light of a California morning,waiting for the sun to come through the portal,still here,which is, it turns out, the whole anointing.
The water rushes over.The pier says I’m still here.You say it back.
Not today.
Not today.