Dusk

Walking along the shore, the tide
inching forward, an awkward feeling.
Like trying to touch a fingertip with the same
fingertip, to bite your own teeth.

Is this what God feels like?
Standing at the edge, looking over
all of creation and seeing nothing
except the red sun reflected
from a violent, rippling ceiling—the ocean surface.
All the chaos from the world beneath
transcribed into white caps and breaking waves
sucked beneath the sand—

ashes of stone and coral,
earth that rolls down walls of dissolving castles
abandoned by the hands that made them.
All that remains, a gentle, wet mound
and a single tower, crumbling as it watches—
the tide is in.