Finding Tides

     And now I'm looking over his shoulder as to the west, over peaks to sunset. 

Hoping I see the end of falling
to the sea and pushing up a wave
to dry the beaches; pull back the tide to
reveal the old junk, the treasure, the fish and the weeds, the bodies and the whales and the shells and the sand. 

     And I see, I see looking down over his chest to his feet over his shoulder I see. I see a drastic, a dramatic, I see a free fall from over his shoulder's peaks: snow capped peaks, the windy, glistening, perilous peaks of climbers, and high hand holds and slick to the foot slips and slides and down down down. He is a mammoth, a mastodon, a dinosaur with rippling scales and sinewy bones not muscles, and he drags his life behind him 

toward the end the end of the wave, 
the coming storm of darkness that blinds with black saltwater.  
But I don't. I don't. 
I would rather find the bottles and the cans and 
the stolen copper rolls for the crusher. 

     I would rather the barnacles slice and find the iron the red; I would rather the barnacles part skin from skin on my feet and fingers, the tips of my fingers, the tips of my fingers where I walk and hold and grasp and the tips of my fingers.