Forty years in the tides
and the storms and
no one to ask
how this became
the old days
how can this be
old if it is now
still sunrise under the pier
the ocean pooling for an instant
as it does when low tide turns
shell gravel rattling in the wash
the dead scattered on the beach
nothing escapes
the rise and fall
the rise and fall
the rise and the fall.
—with a line by W.S. Merwin
