I roll, water-struck men
with beards like weeds
and eyes like a sudden storm,
where the tall waves smack and dance
under a blanket of blue-black sky.

Stars sing themselves to a dream-lit sleep
in the high thin voice of the whale–
the right whale, the wrong whale,
the humpback whale or the sperm,

and there from the shallows comes a salt-soaked man
risen up in a clatter of cowries and clams,
sand on his lips and his tongue.