Tides

In the late 70s, I spent a month in coastal Maine with my then-boyfriend, a charismatic drifter.  We spent half our time in his VW bus and half in an apartment with no running water: The relationship was unstable, stormy.  

But the image that sticks is my first glimpse of the tide pools off the Atlantic coast, in their fascinating profusion of color and form and motion: the gently-waving tentacles of anemones, marauding blue mussels, the shout of carmine and orange and fluorescent yellow lichens, the opening and closing of tiny mouths.  Starfish, sea urchins, periwinkle snails, anemones, barnacles, limpets—even the names were lush and evocative. I was struck by the ephemerality of this living world: when the tide went out, this miniature world went gray and shuttered and lifeless; when the tide came in, it burst into riotous life.

I wish to be fearless and prolific, crackling with creative energy.  Instead, I sit here lumpen, gray, and shuttered, stuttering from one sentence to the next.  I wait for the tide to come in, for a clear picture to emerge.