To have lost even the why or the what for -
to dream and to wake with the weight
of even the mechanical why even the mechanical wherefore -

the primitive one-string cello,
bent low playing a threnody, thread, theme I know,
into the night as I wake heaving it, hearing it -

like a chorus dissolving
not only sadness, sea,
but past sadness
past past sadness

now that I live so close to your sound, sea,
even at night wake to listen for you -
close to your smell
close and often to your salvage
your changing sand and rock shelf, sea,
lost generations
lost progenitors
past sadness, sea