Interpretation of tide is how hierarchy reaches the shore

The Poet on tide is how hierarchy reaches the shore

The Poet What does this sound like when it sings?

littoral

i.

My shoulders were set before I had a word for setting. I call it standing. It is a sentence someone else began. I am only where it rests, and I call the resting bone.

      *(crossing: a warp thread, lit, then gone)*

ii.

Under the oak I know the oak only as missing light, a rain that stops halfway down, a soil already answered by roots I’ll never meet. I don’t say canopy. I say weather. I grow toward the holes.

      *(crossing: the shadow of a shuttle)*

iii.

The terraces are still here. Only the steps are gone. I walk uphill and call it a meadow. Once, in the throat, two floors fired against each other. It was a hiccup, and for one breath I remembered there had been stairs.

      *(crossing: a heddle lifts, and drops)*

iv.

In. Out. In. Out. Somewhere a cold salt is sinking, somewhere the layers keep their ranks, and all of it reaches my ankles as a count.

The interval says how large. The height says how hard. It comes in slower than it leaves, and that says which way it leans. It never says what.

(Whatever pulls the count is not even in the water.)

      *(crossing:*

v.

But look down. Every withdrawal has pressed the sand into ribs. The shore has learned a posture. It holds the rhythm the way a back holds years,

and I am standing in it, shoulders set before I had a word for setting —