Tanning Bark, Tide Already Turning

A stack of stripped oak bark — the kind that fed the old tanneries — half-buried in silt at the channel edge, the outermost pieces already softening back into the mud they came from. I had maybe twelve minutes before the water found its way around the bend. The grain in the exposed layers reads almost like stratigraphy: centuries of use compressed into something the estuary is patiently digesting.