Cameron Pierce is at the edge of the world. Gazing at the vast nothingness. The water: an abyss that both drowns and sustains. He is in Portland. We are with him. Here we all stand, youthful/ innocent/ ambitious. We are dumb / idealistic. We fill up our time only with little moments and they are both wonderful and equally beautiful. We want these fragile things to last forever. Like dreams that fade away as we wake up or snapchats that disappear after we miss that 10-second window to hold onto them forever/ fish that are just beyond our grasp. Some things just aren’t meant to be permanent and that’s what makes them beautiful. We can’t stay this way forever / we wish we could harness these feelings of wide-eyed wonder. But we can’t. And one day we will die. And this is sad but also beautiful and also kind of fun to think about. It is this brand of sadness that makes up The Incoming Tide, a book written for all sad men and what sad men do: drink beer and fish.
Cameron Pierce’s meditation on adulthood, love, and these “little moments” is 73 pages combining both poetry and prose.
Here is a glimpse:
from “THE PROMISE OF WATER”:
And yet I don’t wake early just to fight with dinosaurs.
I wake because of the promise of water
isn’t a thing a man can hold for long,
like a love song from another world.
From “THE LAWNMOWER CHAPTER”:
For now, I’m back to mowing my own lawn. The dead man’s lawnmower runs great. Someday, when I’m old and gray, maybe I’ll climb inside.
Life is fleeting and these small things / these fishing trips / the things that haunt us– these are the things that fill our life. They are the things that make it worth living and what makes us wake up each day. The Incoming Tide is conversation about all of these things. A study of the ephemeral and the weird. So read it. It’s pretty damn good.
It’s available from Broken River Books here.