Every Six Hours, the Cove is Scenic.

It is possible to walk across Back Bay
when the tide is out.

I have never seen a tourist try.
I have never seen a fish
lay dying in the sand at low tide.

When the tide is in, it is possible to kill yourself
by jumping from Back Bay Bridge.

I have never seen anyone do this. I have never
tried. I have heard stories: something like forty
vertical feet of ocean slams into iron trusses
with a vengeance often construed as romantic.

Tourists take pictures.

Every born Mainer knows a postcard
from a giant, vacant, cul de sac of mud;

that the act of staying alive can be simple
as knowing when a body of water
is someplace else.

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