Tidings

for Brigid

I am floating between the past and the future,

floating along tides of my birth

as death ripples near . . .

The past undertows beneath me,

a river swallowing division,

capital and greed.

Rivers speak more than what we hear.

Their language veins into ocean,

their words branch earth like lungs.

Lungs are ancient groves, breathing

oxygen into grief, love blown

to blood and bone and memory.

The tide delivers me to shore, drenched

silent inside language. The moon

pulls the sea inside us, creatures . . .

So as we lose breath

while the whole world gasps,

are we alone

or are we alive, together

breathing forest into sky.

Jesse Sorrell

Chapel Hill, NC