Thalassography

I have known these estuaries — 

the channels and canals, the backwaters

that flush and eddy to the Pacific,

I have skimmed that muddied slurry,

felt the nip in the throat

where the salt in the air is the salt of the coast,

I have tacked where the tide is incomplete:

no rollers and breakers,

only an ebb that rocks the wayfarers — 

a rush of silver, the gavel-smack of mullet

in the night, mud crabs elbowing

denwards under concrete slabs of boat ramps — 

I have stalked where herons stilt and spear

baitfish in green afternoons,

cast crab pots in loose analemmas

to watch the black sonar spread,

tracked prawn trawlers on the broadwater

crawling back in the lavender dawn

then sat at the jetty’s edge

and shucked those tiger shells,

cast sucked heads back into the dark,

crushed mussel shell underfoot

for the burn of sharpened chitin,

stepped where stingrays wallow and idle,

shuffling their barbs, waiting to strike.

I have spent half my life in low tide — 

nights where I have not known

if I am contracting or dragging out again,

where the movement of the water

is the movement of my mind — 

unending comings and goings

of sounds and narrows, those entry points

to my two continents — and my history

is the history of currents: a canal small enough

to catch a childhood in its net,

water vast enough to divide a life.