It is not the easy choice
to live between the tides.
To fast forward through
four seasons in a day –
hot, cold, drenched, dry,
breathing air and water,
anchored against
the turbulence of
shifting sand.
Live as champions
of adaptation
and you become
everything and nothing.
In this space, unadorned
on the white page, you could
choose to live
word-for-word,
without metaphor.
But really, everything
is about something else.
Always more meaning
than meaning.
Fill the space
with heat and thirst,
oceans of salt
diluted and distilled
like swallowed sorrow
and you will know
that this is not that story —
not the lives
of limpets and brittle stars
waiting on the shore
for the tide to turn. Beth Feldman Brandt works in the arts in Philadelphia where she finds plenty of Philadelphia Stories.