For the brine, who so besiege the whale in enterprise.

There is no scene to fit inside this frame,

no Thursday morning endlessness in beds

of deadened skin, of dogs with tongues like sand

or finches, throaty breasted pearls outside

who send to wake & end the glimpse of death,

a whistled stark refrain.  There is no passage

westward, no evening’s guiding gracious shade,

nothing stirred from Adam’s hand

or washed by frothy ships on sea-less stones

in sandbars bleached & sun-stained dry & pale.

The lyric of an inland dirge, a wind

a whistle’s pitch rebounds around the walls

between the shipmen’s eager hauling cries

and lifting beams of steel & stalwart prospect -

a frameless scene of empty Thursday’s rest.