A secret, sublimated life

It manifests in play of light
on mangroves at the water-line,
wavering mirage-like
in the ways of fire transmogrified.

It rises in pneumatophores'
euphoric spikes like organ-pipes,
diluting brine that seeps in from the bay
with deliquescent jade.

Its banks are haunts of plumed nomads,
herons, ibis, cormorants,
who wait with carved heraldic stance
to catch the current's offerings.

Its surface is a work in progress -
bottles bobbing to the sea,
branches drifting, sometimes dolphins
courting, vaulting sportively.

Its state is fluency, a morphing
into what appears unchanged
through sleek advances of the tide,
whose ardent urges soon subside.

Floating skies can't colonise
the narcissistic moon's confessor;
water films the signal flash of sunrise
and the lightning's glance.

Its bed is like a sunken city,
inundated long ago, harbouring
detritus and the light-shy
and the little-known.

Shimmying among grey mangroves,
murmuring in many tongues,
the river is a hydra of desire,
a live electrolyte…