Now weaned from salt sea water, skin mottled
Milk-green, the brine itch and worry of wave has laid
Your sleek fur to waste.  Disrobed and strange
You gleam, jewel-like, cast amid the salt-rimmed wreckage--
The half-eaten buoy, the raveled mass of dulse, drift-
Wood, shell and scavenged bone.  A cloud of sand fleas lifts
And settles as they pay their crawling obeisance.

                                   Nothing useless in you remains.
Nothing useful.  Godheaded, drifting down a dark river
Through waters ancient and mediterranean, you bid
Your own age farewell, treading oceans till you tumbled like
A promise from the mouth of the Atlantic.  Curious sea creature.

Supplicants all, we sink knees into cold sand.
Uneasy propinquity, we pray the tide comes in.