The Ebb

It is dark on the quay,
With only a white gull calling,
And a whisper at sea.
Where the long, slow tide is falling,
And the creak of a rope where a ship stirs in its sleep,
And the sound of slow water where the outward currents creep.

There is something of death
In the sound of this outward flowing—
A failing of breath
And we go as the waters are going.
The inward swirl, the joy of the high waves' leap.
And then the turn of the tide, back to the deep.