What Living Is

What Living Is

If the sea were idle
for one lonely breath,

with all the stones as
breathless as stones,

the sea an unlapping
Tongue ungreening

and the harvest moon
nowhere around, here

our quietest beast might
breathe up from under

the sea's murky chrome,
our beast on the waves

—a participle dangling—
like a boar's head, black

and blueing, while an empty
dark eats it up.