I arrived at the edge of Galveston with no expectation other than to sit, to listen, and to let the shoreline speak in its own language. The sky hung wide and pale, stretched thin over the Gulf, while the tide moved with a quiet authority that asked for nothing yet commanded everything. There is something about this place-unrefined, unguarded-that strips a person down to their most honest state. I did not come here to write. I came here to remember how to feel.
The first thing that settles in is the sound. Not loud, not aggressive, but persistent-waves folding into themselves, again and again, like breath that refuses to break. It is a rhythm older than memory, one that bypasses thought entirely and settles somewhere deeper. The repetition does not dull the mind; it steadies it. Each crest and fall carries a quiet insistence: stay here, stay present, stay within this moment.
Then comes the air-thick with salt, damp against the skin, carrying the scent of kelp and distant storms. It does not simply surround you; it enters you. It fills the lungs and lingers there, grounding every breath in something elemental. It is intoxicating, but not in the way of excess. It is a kind of clarity, sharp and honest, that cuts through the noise I carried with me before arriving.
I sat among the scattered posts rising from the shore, worn and weathered, each one standing as a quiet testament to time. They no longer hold what they once did, yet they remain-firm, present, unashamed of their erosion. Watching the tide move around them, I felt an unexpected kinship. There are things we build in life that the world eventually takes back, not out of cruelty, but as part of its natural order. And still, like these posts, something within us endures.
Gulls circled overhead, their calls slicing through the steady hush of the waves. They moved without hesitation, guided by instinct alone, unconcerned with boundaries or direction. There was freedom in their flight, but also precision-a knowing that required no explanation. I found myself wondering how often I resist that kind of clarity, how often I overthink what the world has already made simple.
It was here, with the tide pressing forward and retreating without regret, that the words of Tideposts found their footing. I did not force them. They rose naturally, shaped by the rhythm around me. The poem does not belong to me as much as it belongs to this place. It is a reflection of what I witnessed-the quiet persistence of motion, the erosion of certainty, and the strange comfort found within both.
There is humility in standing where land and water meet. Nothing holds its shape for long. The sand shifts beneath your feet, the shoreline redraws itself, and the horizon refuses to stay defined. Yet within that constant change, there is something undeniably steady. The pulse of the ocean does not falter. The cycle does not break. It continues, whether we notice it or not.
Tideposts
Gulls cut arcs above the foam, Waves strike ribs of weathered wood, Salt claims each splintered home, Wind repeats what time has stood.
Read the full poem →I realized, sitting there, how much I have tried to control what was never meant to be fixed. Life does not hold still for inspection. It moves, reshapes, dissolves, and returns in forms we do not always recognize. And perhaps the peace I have been searching for does not come from holding things together, but from learning to stand within that movement without resistance.
The longer I remained, the quieter everything inside me became. Not empty-just uncluttered. The weight I carried here began to loosen, not because anything was solved, but because it no longer needed to be. The ocean does not resolve itself. It exists. It moves. It continues. And in that continuation, it offers a kind of reassurance that words struggle to hold.
By the time the light softened and the sky began its slow descent into gray, I felt something shift. Not dramatic, not sudden-just a subtle return to center. A reminder that I am not separate from what surrounds me, but part of it. That the same rhythm I hear in the tide exists within me, steady and constant, even when I forget to listen.
Galveston did not give me answers today. It gave me something better. It gave me space. It gave me stillness within motion. It gave me the quiet understanding that nothing needs to be fixed in order for something to be true.
And as I stood to leave, the waves continued, unchanged and unwavering, carrying forward without hesitation. I realized then that I do not need to hold onto this moment for it to matter. Like the tide, it will return in its own way, at its own time.
For now, it is enough to have been here.