water
i have almost always lived west of the water and i wonder if the sounds are
different. i have toed the pacific in san diego and i have stared at the ocean
in bretagne but my life has been spent looking east — at the sunrise, and i know
there is some irony, some existential incongruity there; even i have been moved
to tears at the sun coming up over the atlantic, even if i was on drugs at the time.
lake michigan is nothing like the ocean but i can smell it through my window. in the
summer sometimes i can hear it, the tidal pull, the math and the patterns, but it’s
frozen now, unbelievably still. i watch the water, my rivers and my lake, i watch
the way it coalesces: i sink into its stillness, and for a moment i am happy.