Tide

"Tide: Stresses exerted in a body by the gravitational action of another . . . .
Every body in the universe raises tides, to some extent, on every other."
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 5th edition

 Raven, is my mother
in there? I whisper.
Fog holds her to a limb,
beak, a black knife
held to morning's grey throat,
sky as indifferent
as it should be. Filigree
of poppy leaves breaks
the clay, earth opening,
a leaking sieve more than a gash,
a wound I keep wanting
to remember. Raven answers
with her wings, pumping wind,
then absence.

                 *
Wild hare have left
their crumbling pearls
between dunes. Blonde sea grass
cuts and grabs, little pearl
of my own blood, sticky
then smeared with sand.
Don't cry. How many times
did she say that?—catching
my tears in an empty Coke bottle,
showing me the wet stain
on a handkerchief. I stopped
crying then, so not to waste
some vital fluid we shared,
her cheeks streaked
almost daily. I wash the red crust
from my ankle, let in the sting
of saltwater. Fog purls up, veins of
purple clouds heavy on the horizon,
as the storm shivers then stalls,
holding back its rain.

      * 

Who can find that other place—
clouds torn into a blue field,
sun burning dew from orange petals,
the invisible life cleaning
delicate bone, hollow shaft
of feather, knot of hair? When someone
you love dies, for so long
you want to follow. Every month,
more than a year now, I've walked barefoot
on a flat, open beach, cold Pacific
pushing in, shallow rush of creek water
falling down, joining. Sometimes I count
dead birds, spread their mangled wings
into a still flight in sand. No, not yet.
A raven can live on air, and I can see
where this is all going. No,
not yet. Here. When I look back,
my footprints, crooked, weave the sea foam,
some places you might think
I walked into the tide
and it kept me.