Estuary

Blue gathers into estuaries and their sheen,
tidal blue.
At low tide: gull-prints, a soft pocking of absence.
The flats spread, taking shape and losing it.
From the dark of silted underplaces,
cold blue, the diluted gleam,
a film of tidal light.

Blue thins and wanders, a slow bleed
along the faint line of return,
littoral.
Blue lowers, folds back,
a weight without form,
held under.

Mud receives it, works it loose:
blue in grains,
blue in residue.
Blue gives way.

Tunmise Adebowale

Tunmise Adebowale is a Nigerian-born New Zealander. Her work has been published in Starling, Landfall, The Big Idea, Arts Makers Aotearoa, Mayhem Literary Journal, The Spinoff, Tarot Poetry Journal, takahē, The Pantograph Punch, Turbine | Kapohau, Newsroom, NZ Poetry Shelf, Verb Wellington, and ReDraft. She writes the Substack whispers of oizys. 

The Poetry Shelf Breathing Room: A place to enter and pause and take a long slow breath and then another, as you absorb the beauty movement joy stillness wonder movement of a poem.