A water where
the ebb-wave, flood-born
is flood-broken yet
the wave wavers and transports
me through the river’s dam

into the sea. A flood-broken
ebb-wave where the slime sucked
below the swell, oozes
the surface light into
its dun density,
an ochre silt mass lulled by
the wave’s gliding gait.

A water whose slime
slides under the wave’s swelling skin
whose slime settles through the light’s
silence winnowing through a prism

and between the ebb and the flux
billow-buoyed mud
suffuses
my melancholy
with the fluid mnemonic snapshot
of the estuary

where the mud flood faints
waywardly weaning
new fluent transfers
in sleek serpentine streaks
of oceanic blue.