Tidal Basin


Germination Detail Part III, by Leslie Shellow

contemplations about what stays in the net

Friday, August 20, 2010

Tidal Basin Notes

tidal basin
An area that holds water during high tide, especially a body of water in an area subject to tides whose water level is maintained at a desired level by artificial means.

"tidal basin." The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. 20 Aug. 2010. .

tidal basin
A random collection on purpose.



The basin is a wide sleepy mouth.

It fills and empties, empties and fills.

The basin catches and releases. Consumes and expectorates.

What comes in may be examined closely for a short while; an intense get-to-know-you; then, placed back gently in the water. Or thrown. In any manner, given its leave. Which it will take nonetheless.

There may be nothing to hold onto once it's left. Or perhaps, a water-borne footprint: a shaggy jacket of bark from an old stick, a chunk of Styrofoam buoy, or a silver scale.

Don't hold on as if to the collection of seashells stuffed and broken in last summer's paper bag. Rather, become, if momentarily, the scale iridescing, the buoy floating, the stick in the eddy, swirling and drowning.

The basin may be the scene of a crime or embarrassment. But given the pull of the moon, this, too, in time, disappears.

What remains remains to be written.




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