day TWO HUNDRED and FIFTY ONE

Tides

“When they go low, we go high.”
—Michelle Obama

Beginnings, almost imperceptible.
           Neap tide, right angled astronomy,
    barely a ripple
                      to expose the pulling away….

Gradually, a stronger undertow
           as solar and lunar gravities diverge.
    A more insistent tugging,
                      a more insistent return,

conchitic signatures inscribed
           and erased, a fresh epistle each time.
    Without the power
                      of geometry to slow

the surge, expansion of range,
           spring tide blurring practiced certainty
    into fuzzy aftermath.

                                              Now,
                      here, new ribbons form

and coalesce on shifting shores.
           Neap tides swell into a rising, becoming.
    Breakers of change:
                      struggle, renunciation;

acquiescence refused,
           heterogeneity embraced.  At the crest,
    one wave merged
                      from many, resolute.

Deimos, stripped of the power
           to scream, liturgy denied.  Gravities
    diverge.
                    Now, here,
                      a spring tide, going high.

--Dianne Borsenik