At low tide the channels return to their names.
Nothing is lost because water has wandered;
each silver passage remembers the bend
where reeds lean inward and shelter the sand.

A map cannot carry the weight of a river.
It offers a line, then must answer to rain.
We walk to the bank with our pockets of markers
and put every missing light back again.

No lantern belongs to the nearest dark doorway.
No shell is a substitute simply for shining.
The patient work asks for the particular place,
the curve of the shore and its delicate joining.

Beyond us the sea makes a room without walls.
Its windows are moving; its threshold is foam.
Yet even that restless, innumerable water
can follow a channel and recognize home.

So leave the old stones where the current has taught them.
Bring only the pieces the evening still needs.
Let copper and violet gather in shallows;
let quiet instructions emerge from the reeds.

By morning the chart will be less of a promise,
more evidence laid at the edge of the blue:
a passage made clear, and a light in its harbor,
with nothing called finished until it is true.
Tides return.