Memory Rises Like the Tide

by Joe Nichols; byline by Richard Walter

Some writings don’t need explanation.
They arrive like weather—unexpected, alive, familiar in the bones.

This one, by Joe Nichols, is such a piece.
Let it wash over you like the monsoon rain it evokes.
Let it remind you that what’s true doesn’t vanish—it returns.
As memory. As instinct. As tide…

“Monsoon wind parts the linen curtains.
Rain-soaked earth and jasmine scent the air while palm fronds rustle like pages turned by an unseen reader. In that shuffle, the body remembers the poem already written upon it.

A koel’s call settles upon the skin and raises a lost afternoon of marigolds and song.
Memory rises like tide on an inner shore, proof that recall lives beneath thought.

The heart charts its route long before the mind speaks the word.
Presence is discovered, not taught.
It awaits beneath errands and headlines, blooming whenever we step upon the ground already beneath us.

Listen to the eaves drip onto clay pots.
The distant laughter threading through bamboo.
Each detail says remember.
The instinct that stirs at joy—or the subtle pull in the gut—is a compass already set true.

When dusk gathers, trust that silent tug.
Walk into night barefoot, unburdened.
The road once begged from the stars is the trail your heart has followed since its first beat bright as fireflies and certain as dawn after rain.”

We are not waiting for the path.
We are remembering it.

A tide is rising—not of urgency, but of truth remembered.
And in its rhythm, we recognize each other.

If this moved you, share it with someone who knows what it means to feel the tug of something deeper.

The hush before a turning. The quiet certainty of presence.

Let’s meet at the waterline.
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