The Day Before
Today is no different
and will pass without a word,
will holler and vanish in a storm cloud
that in a season
will return us calm tides and birds.
The shells spiraling toward center
could as easily be heading away.
Is that not reason enough to rejoice?
*
What low tide lays bare
might not be expected
but someone once pitched
everything we find here into the sea,
making this act of rediscovery
its own strenuous abandonment.
*
If we could not remember
the day before
would the waves speak
a less weighty dialect?
Without history would its torchbearers
pine like the rest of us
for definition
and for an image of ourselves
tomorrow?
Without love’s deeds and its failures
would I be left wondering alone by the sea
why the severity of my hands?
-published by Arlington Literary Journal
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