Why We Have Tides

Because The La’s were playing on the stereo, and the crescent moon looked frozen in the morning, and I wasn’t thinking about traffic because these phrases kept popping up and keeping me busy . . .

Sometimes the moon forgets
it needs to pull.

In winter, for instance,
when it ought to be ruling,

when its crown adds a cold blue 
tilt to the morning, 

instead 
it watches the foxes catch the sun

and turn more orange
and start the day—

Wait, aren’t they nocturnal?
Shouldn’t they head for their burrows now?—

The moon’s thoughts wander off
the same as yours and mine. 

All of this space 
inside us . . . 

so many feelings 
to fill it with. 

The moon blinks back to attention
and hauls in the tide.

Rob Carney

Rob Carney is originally from Washington state. He is the author of six collections, including 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press 2015), which was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Weather Report (Somondoco Press 2006), which won the Utah Book Award for Poetry, and his latest book, Fact + Figures (Hoot 'n' Waddle 2020). His work has appeared in Cave Wall, Columbia Journal, Sugar House Review, Terrain: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, and dozens of others, as well as the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward (2006). In 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Foundation Award for seven of the poems included in The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). He is a Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley University and lives in Salt Lake City.

Read an interview with Rob Carney about Facts + Figures.

Read a book review of Rob Carney's Facts + Figures.