Instructions for Compass Truing

When obstacles are too large, wait for better directions.


1. Put your hands in the surf at true midnight to hold back the tide.

2. Your voice is small compared to any wave’s voice. Your words small and brief compared to the long grumble of a breaker cantering down the beach. So always whisper.

3. Ocean water is the key that fits the beach’s tumblers–unlocks a thousand thousand lives, most hidden and arcane. Fill your pocket with brine water.

4. The ceremony of the tide is thirty-four parts per thousand salt, burning the eyes and nose. Carry the moon’s task list.

5. Prepare a list of five confessions written on kelp. The tide has a taste for long homilies.

6. Fate is one way to read the wrack line. Decision to investigate is the other way to read it. Bring glasses whose lens are made of fog and be prepared to study.

7. Is the water radiant, or simply a suspension of many small lives and tattered seaweed which shines in winter’s low slant of light? Choose one stone from the wave edge and carry it beneath your tongue.

8. The tide can come in and strand a person not paying attention. Water over the boots is either a mistake or the first part of the story. Repeat “once upon a time” to the waves until they retreat.

9. Bring a bag to carry whatever losses the ebb tide leaves behind. Sometimes at night it can feel as if the ocean is grieving, the way it pats the sand with its little hands, assuring itself that it’s not alone.