What kind of water rushes
toward a border of land
and then retreats?
What edge
constantly resists?
How can the shortness of a blade
serve as garrote to a life
severed at the neck?
How do we find a way to thank at least the sand
for being there, its myriad pinpricks of glass?
What in the shapes of leaves
predicts the sorrow
of their fall?
How do we stay in the river’s limpid heart,
and how do we listen through bone?
How do we sift the sunlight back
through trees and drink
again of green?
In response to Via Negativa Oceanologist.