He Cast the Last Tide

He Cast the Last Tide

He rose before the gulls,

boots wet, hands salted with the tide.

The boat groaned under his weight,

an old hymn in timber and rope,

fog curling around his shoulders like a secret.

Storms never asked permission,

yet he met them with steady arms,

pulling fish from the gray churn,

pulling life from the water’s quiet grudges.

Crows circled above abandoned roofs,

their cries chasing the hush of waves,

and he laughed quietly,

knowing the sea always keeps its debts.

The pier sagged with rot,

the nets hung heavy, dripping,

and every haul was a gamble,

every tide a quiet threat.

Yet he worked without complaint,

his hands learning the language of wind,

the rhythm of waves,

the secrets that only the horizon tells.

Long before him, my great-great-grandfather

pushed barges through river bends,

muscle and sweat shaping the tide,

hands knowing wood like a living thing.

The water ran through their blood,

a line unbroken,

from barges to boats,

from father to son, to me.

Back at the dock, the village waited,

silent as driftwood,

watching his hands,

watching him whisper to the horizon.

He did not speak of fear,

only of tides,

of winds that remembered names,

and the sea that always remembered him.

Evenings found him on the broken fence,

the boat pulled ashore,

smoke curling from a stubborn stove,

eyes fixed on jagged rocks

that cut the sky like sharp memory.

He told no one of the fogs that came to him

with the taste of salt and old sorrow,

but I know he felt it all,

the sea, the storm, the silence.

When the lighthouse blinked far away,

he felt its lonely light like a finger

tracing the curve of his memory,

the smell of salt and old rope in his chest.

Crows still circled above the abandoned roofs,

their cries a song only he could hear,

and I imagine him there,

hands guiding the boat I will never touch.

Now, the fog comes to me

with the same weight he carried,

and I hear him in the boat’s creak,

the call of gulls,

the hush of the tide over jagged rocks.

Even years later,

the sea pulls me to him,

pulling ghosts from the silent waves,

hands I cannot hold,

heart tied to the salt and wind,

where only he ever belonged.