This Was My Bulwark

Do savor that peculiar sweetness 
of seaweed flowing like sleep
           in the brackish current.

They will not always be this way, 
the land and the sea. There will be
              too much salt and not enough

fresh water in the estuary. The sea and river 
will meet, and the river will give itself up
             by the mouth as if

with devotion. And here you thought
all water was female, and life, too, in its resilience, 
             but oysters in the intertidals

massed in crenellated slums of generation 
on generation will shut their mouths,
             clench grit, and spawn

in jellied mantels. Merroir will go bitter. 
The oysters will loosen like teeth.
              On the socketed reef, waves will break

and beat loose shell to sandbar 
swallowed at high tide, pitched
              and scattered to rumble in the numb

cochlea of castaways, beach-strewn.
Homeward birds in prowed formation will fly 
              overhead without descending
 
to taste the suckling fish who have flown t
he ancient nurseries and aerial roots
              of black mangrove, the hiding places

and shallow fields of sea grass swaying
as if with wind. The birds and the fish will say 
              ashes to ashes, forgetting

bone shards, silver and mercury fillings, 
glittering silica, the citadel
             plowed under, moon or no moon.

Read more from Issue 15.1.