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.