“The Language of Tides” is by Lois Parker Edstrom.

I’d been browsing through “The Language of Tides,” a new release from Tillamook-based poetry publisher MoonPath Press, when another book arrived in the mail: “Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon.”

The coincidence practically demanded that I explore tidal titles this week.

Let’s begin with “The Language of Tides,” a poetry collection by Whidbey Island, Washington, author Lois Parker Edstrom. Many of these are new poems, but others have been harvested from her work previously published over the last dozen years.

After a career spent in nursing, and then grappling with health issues of her own, “I favor a quiet life,” Edstrom writes.

She finds worlds of meaning in domesticity: there may be grief embodied in the pepper grinder on the kitchen table, but there is zest in the garden: “A hummingbird comes jazzing by / its flight an improvisation of zip and dazzle …”

Whether revisiting a childhood memory or exploring the small towns and local beaches on Whidbey, Edstrom brings a keen eye and a considerate heart, bearing witness to what she encounters.

In her poem “What Brings Us to Water,” she writes, “There is a capillary tug / to be at water’s edge / this low tide day…”

In another poem, she describes tides as “a glossary of surprises.”

The next time she moseys to the beach, Edstrom might like to take along a copy of “Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon.”

Although billed as a guidebook, this new release — co-authored by University of Washington marine environmental science colleagues Ryan P. Kelly, Terrie Klinger and John J. Meyer, and published by University of Washington Press — instead seems to be a kind of textbook and guidebook hybrid.

Don’t be scared off by the textbook portion. The enthusiasm the authors have for their topic is genuine and they do share remarkable stories of the dynamic interface between ocean and continent as it plays out every day here in the Northwest.

So bear with their earnest tutorial at the beginning about the ancient geologic forces that have created the landscape we live on today, and hang tight as they enumerate the multiplicity of conditions that factor into what kinds of life forms have adapted to live in shoreline environments today.

There’s real drama here: predation, invasive species, environmental extremes on a twice daily basis as the tides ebb and flow, and eating and sexual mechanics that boggle the imagination.

This information truly will help you think more comprehensively about which marine species live where along our coastline, and why.

Then, chapters three through six provide the guidance that budding beach naturalists will be chomping at the bit for: where to go and what to see throughout Washington’s inland saltwater beaches, and then on Washington’s outer coast, the northern and southern Oregon Coast.

From rocky headlands to sandy beaches, there’s fantastic biodiversity, “Between the Tides.”

This week’s books

“The Language of Tides” by Lois Parker Edstrom

Copper Canyon Press — 246 pp — $24

“Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon” by Ryan P. Kelly, Terrie Klinger and John J. Meyer

University of Washington Press — 264 pp — $24.95