Shallow Estuary

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transition-place, land-sea place where freshwater / meets and mixes with salt yourm / tidal culture pro by peninsulas / Holocene history, a river-eroded / or glacially scoured valley / flooded with rising seas a brackish body with an opening / creeks flowing / a free connection to the ocean / a dynamic system diluted sea / the shocked river system
                         bar-built, lagoonish / by barrier beaches and barrier spits / you- plain / on a stable tectonic edge / marginal coast of minimal tide / offshore banks built by sand and shore, sediment remade / into bounty, into overwash flats and dunes / the mainland ridge engulfed, shore currents the spits / swelling with the littoral swerve
                                                              a dense salt wedge tunnels towards land, sl-   

                                          most productive region, youm produce more / matter than jungle or farm
                   the unique communities of yourm tidal shelters /safe spawning places, sea  
          nurseries / migratory birds rest, refuel on fish and invertebrates / youm   
        control or conform / to the shifts in salt concentration / osmoregulators    
   osmoconformers / animals burrow from predation / thrive in stable precipitate          our
  where bacteria drink oxygen / from that anoxic dross, its limited flux / what’s          our over
more important than phytoplankton?—liquid writing flushed out by the tides            record of 
 its turbid cursive, abundant / diatoms and dinoflagellates in the sediment            the rest at rest
 (so much food is detritus / from the settlement of the sedimentation)           seeping into yourm
                                                                                                                             furans, phenols, diox-
                                               the kids walk down to yourm beach        condition: plastics, pest-
                                                 hot footpaths burning their feet       these contaminants, yourm
                                            I skim a slate and while it sinks        runoff from impervious carp-
                           huge boats are lifting youm to the sky            industrial discharge, construction
                 so we lie together on yourm dry shallows           sewage from failing septic tanks  
                           perfectly warm, perfectly still, by            of fertilizer and pet waste from law- 
  yourm mangroves, swamps and rocky features             is valuable filtration           
 yourm fresh and saline marshes, yourm mud              of fresh silt, yourm performance     
                 flats, sand flats and sandy beaches           to eutrophic temper, ripple, flow     
 yourm deltas, tidal pools and marine grasses             youm are that most productive habitat, te-
   compared with most youm welcome more                             
             yourm precious plant buffers absorb          unravelled by the tide            
      floods and surges, protect upland habitat          cords of upland exiles            
                            and our valuable real estate           begins where rhythms collide       
                  estuarine plants and marsh grasses            riverine with maritime, yourm touch   
                  retranslate erosion back to shoreline           Perform valuable transition, condition 

-tected / by lanky barrier islands 
the bays, the harbours, the sounds
with connection / to tide rhythm, the

rm narrow coastal inlets / on a gently sloping
wave / deposited in stretched bars / parallel to the
shallow lagoons / glazed after flood, here come the long-

ips friction into wave / or surge overwhelms river, subsuming freshwater into / mixture

                               estuary: aestu-/ arium: tidal inlet of the sea, from aestus: semi-                           to dilution, to sleep, sleep no more / morning salutation,                            sleep no more / on yourm bed, spindly ocean / curling                                                       cut away the deep / trembling or sleek, old skin is 

yourm eutrophication and hypoxia.                      
diking and damming                     engulfed by yourm own impulse / yourm stret-
-fishing, -grazing and wetland filling            sense returns along the passage of flesh / 
the Anthropocene, our deforestation              and forest / yourm secret net of form /
in benthic serenity                           limpid laughter in the shallows / 
species’ tissues
ins and heavy metals                            an emergent morse, a series / of
icides                            gabbled, bubble-bold, shine contemporary
arks                   or excess oxygen feeds
sediment                 excess life, which decays, devours
                    oxygen, produces
ns, raw                  hypoxic and
                      anoxic zones
               what’s essential is
nding         dissolved oxygen and variations
          of salinity through space
          what can be missed
          is the sediment of settlement
            in intertidal mudflats, erasing all space
              for vegetation, clogging
                  mouths, gills
                               over a mind that holds firm against the onshore
                              that frantic, frivolous film
                             sheen of yourm absolute
                           of a quivering prism upon the shivering
                          toward being, the trend
                        but within youm everything vanishes: gestures
                   from yourm flat array
            perhaps a tuft of knotted scrub rises precariously
     perhaps a kelly brow, perhaps a slender island

enclosed tide, free to open
eyelid of evening / sleep is dead
lake, ache no more / as yourm fables
shed / sleep no more on yourm turbid bed

ched swing curdles to turrets / of invisible speed but
youm sigh with human necklace, with villages / of thunder
streaked onto thought / what use sight if it should melt / yourm
what use memory covered / in estuarine silt?

clues, petrified pulses, soaked echoes gobble-
dribbled still / echoes of ceaseless movement in low tide’s parchment / yourm bony islands’
                                    drying scalps (there’s a hawk’s foot
                                   lofting the flats, an old wreck gnawn
                                  down to vertebrae)
 

                                                                              youm grant small creatures like the eye 
                                                                     the skill to live by water, which is never still  
                                                                                             yourm key’s a quiet retreat   
                                                                  a seethe, slowly sinking back into position    
                                                               without ever leaving: yourm wrinkled veil     
                                                                   over a timorous moon, its quavering      
                                                                               axons bending into drift       
                                                               a brain smooth as ground reef        
                                a billowing phrase receding into the green         
                                     splayed over a continent’s shelf