Originally published in BeeHive 3:4 (December 2000), this poem maps human experiences, narrative, weddings, funerals, and memory onto the ebb and flow of waters in tidelands— those coastal regions where rivers flow into the sea. The metaphorical relations between tidelands and individual and collective experience, past and present, knowledge and intuition are enacted in the use of hypertext and layers. This layering of text and image makes some lines and words difficult to read, breaking with the tradition of sequential arrangement of texts to draw attention towards new juxtapositions and the blending of human experiences. The poem also references estuaries, islands, and water during high, low, and neap tides— lunar and maritime cycles presented as a female analog to the more masculine solar solstices and equinoxes that have received such archetypal attention. This is a work worthy of rereading and reflection to allow its language and images to ebb and flow in and out of your conscious mind.

Featured in BeeHive.