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.