Low Tide

Alan Shapiro

On the mud flats

 where I’m walking

 each step pushes the wet

 out from beneath it

 to a dry halo

of a heel and toe

 which as I lift it

 dampens to

 a trail of pools

 behind me as I walk -- 

I make them all

 along the flats and

 when I circle back

 they flash like lakes

 seen from a plane

my body could be

 the shadow of, inching

 across the continent

 down below, inside

 of which invisibly

between the sand grains

 in the infinitesimal

 capillary spaces

 closing and opening

 under my steps are

creatures too small

 to see or name

 for whom each grain’s

 another land mass,

 a different continent,

which makes the water

 rushing in as my foot lifts

 another ocean rushing out

 as my foot falls,

 so that wherever I go

quakes and floods,

 subductions and extinctions

 on a scale too

 miniscule to register

 go with me -- over

the mudflats happy

 and thoughtless like

 a leper without his bell,

 wandering the world

 meaning no harm.