Christien Gholson

Tidepool: Elegy

1.

Waves fall into themselves all night long. I dream of
insomniac children playing at the water’s edge, dark
circles under their eyes – so many unseen deaths
battering against their sleep.

2.

Grim skies, grey, no shadows, rain-pocked sand. I listen
to sea water slip down rock. Drops hit the surface of a
tidepool. I am there for the moment when the surface
clears: body and thoughts, still.

3.

The drop moves through the seams of tendon, networks
of blood, marrow, into a cave without light, arrives
at a cache of smooth black stones placed in a circle by
grief.

4.

A sculpin with huge black eyes takes in the world
from the safety of a red sea-leaf forest; green anemones
wait for my reflection to sink towards them, mouths
half-filled with sand.

5.

Clinging above the water line, a purple sea star, skin
tattooed with tiny white spines that resemble astro-
logical signs, prophesying grief, mother of gravity,
what shapes each body on this beach.

6.

Moon behind a layer of grey cloud. Strips of white
foam make their own light. On a cliff edge, empty
chairs around a fire. At the water’s edge, a pickup,
headlights pointed into the waves.

7.

The beam of light dissolves close to shore, swallowed
by cold, ocean mercifully taking everything back into
itself, enfolding it all in salt: shards, scales, smooth
black stones, the unseen dead.

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Christien Gholson is the author of several books of poetry, including Absence: Presence (Shanti Arts Publishing) and All the Beautiful Dead (Bitter Oleander Press); and a novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind (Parthian Books). Several of his chapbooks can be found online, including Tidal Flats (Mudlark). He lives in Oregon, works as a somatic-oriented mental health counselor. He can be found at: https://christiengholson.blogspot.com/