a lecture on tides—

keep the sea on both sides — early winter light still iron

the common gull made strange by calling it the winter mew —

the red-shouldered hawk the same by calling it the winter hawk —

it’s closed fords season from conkers to conchology —

my daughter asked how do you spell it & I said — you don’t

a winter wavelet — a ripple — the specific gravity of the water in the atlantic¹

waves firework against the seawall — as though the bird was made of hedge

or vice versa — crows beaking & as though it were a vast steaming lime-kiln²

sea smoke exhaled from the water — white frost when it is below eye level &

black frost when the smoke spreads above the observer³ — deep aching breaths

winter intermission the hedge flutter at eye level

& though I’m wrong to call january the bleak mid-winter — it is

a mild winter makes for a long slippery rail season — a train under

philadelphia — the hedge in squally snow quiet — the house

opposite a rev war dollhouse — each window an orange pulse — calm smoke rises vertically⁴

winter-bitten the specific gravity of the sea⁵

I imagine that from above the rath must look like an inoculation

I mistook witch’s broom for birds’ nests — I mistook the music in her roar for

the music in her room⁶ — the specific

solemnity & weight of the sea — in north philadelphia thinking of it swifting⁷

a body in revolution let therefore
an ocean of uniform concentrated and separated
but let the collapse the resistance
which affects water which move in perfect
in other words satellites⁸

a rigid body may then be treated
let E represent the earth the ideal surface
without perturbation by the moon celestial mechanics
will be a closed curve
joining the centers of the “inverted tides”⁹

as good a reason to start as any swift or swallow

I’d knock the spots off the birds¹⁰ snow won’t stick to the intertidal today

winter boots with hawk jingle where our votes might go by boat

knuckles of sea-wrack the tide being out — we walk it

this is what I was afraid of — I say five times a day

I hate to say I hate anything these days —

I feel a real obligation to be relentlessly positive — but

I do hate rooms that look as though they were

decorated all at once instead of allowing objects & colors &

textures & mud salt & fetch to accumulate over tides — sea wrack &

rejectamenta thrashed back & forth across the intertidal

a week of cheese & ashes the horse mussel sews itself into the ground¹¹

we are an uncountable noun we live in an endless lent —

back in december I read the line the deep sea forgetteth not

only to find in january that in fact it reads the deep sea freezeth not¹² —

one of us opened a drawer & found it full of dead birds —

it was already a heavy metaphor — already too much for

a poem — & yet here it is in the poem — I think they were starlings

an invasive species but my son says he loves their iridescent

spotty bodies — & everyone crowded around to open the drawer again