The Spoken Address

You're in the tide that fills the channel and empties it, and comes back anyway. You're in the wind that crosses the water with nothing between it and the sea. You're in the salt the wind puts on my mouth when I stand here too long without speaking.

I say it here. I say it here, to you.

You're in the spring that never came, that stayed the whole year and took the light with it. You're in the thing you said about the weather, *it'll turn*, and it turned, and the wind has not turned back, and I have kept it turning.

I say it here. I say it here, to you.

You. Not in the house. There is no house. Not in the water either: the water is water, and the tide is not you and it does not answer. I put you nowhere. I stand in the wind and say your name into it, and I am the one who says it. That is what I am. The wind takes it out across the flats and does not bring it back. I stay. I say it again, because the saying is not about you any more. It is what is left of me when no one answers: the one still speaking. My name is the name of the one who keeps saying it.