I stretch on a tattered rug, turning my spine.
Sometimes I feel immense as fossil remains

Of a pilot whale washed ashore, dense layers
Of blubber and organs torn by gulls,

Devoured from below by tropical things
That slime their way up out of the drenched sand,

Until only the marble vertebrae
Remain under ribs that rock up like vaults,

Polished white by sun. Jellyfish are caught
As if in teeth, dried until invisible.

Terrestrial crabs with furry black legs
Scale and descend all day like workmen.

Warm surf sloshes up and slithers back down
Through thoracic castles, where once much pain,

And longing, and an essential flicker
Of life’s movement and radiance ran through—

Sheltered by shadowing leaves of coconut palms,
Aquatic song of rising sunset winds,

Bumped by newborn bulbs of beach hibiscus,
Crowded with busy fronds of sea lettuce—

No more the vast call of seething cold gulfs
Aswarm with sustenance, no zoom of fluke,

Smothered now by common purslane, sinking
Hiss of sand that slowly swallows the great spine.