Tide pool

The rocky ocean shore of Oregon has features called Tide Pools where life finds a crucible. The evening hours, the tide returning to the deep, a shallow hole in the rock along the shore holds the leftover vigor that stirred, and stirred again, in the roaring waves who swept their salty forces here and again only moments only hours ago. This quiet leaving is life. The hermit crab settles in next to the anemone, along with a minnow, trapped in a tub of isolation from their source for the next distance the moon will travel. There in the silence of the dark, flipping their claws on the pocket of sand at the bottom, inching their tendrils over the black, grainy rock chimney, life awaits the return of the tide to stir them from their solitary confinement. So it is I await the next wave of this life to roll forward to greet me in its terrible and liberating way, bankruptcy, bills, birthing classes, and baby. Somewhere in all of it there is a great joy regardless of the tumult, or isolation or the raised salt content in the tide pool.