Saltwater Hymn for a Drowned Satellite

It fell the way a hymn falls out of an empty church: slowly, then all at once, then not at all.

The fishermen say it still sings on clear nights, past the reef, a thin bright thread of numbers rising through forty fathoms of black.

They say the parrotfish have learned its rhythm. They say the squid go silver when it speaks.

I think of it down there, solar wings furred with coral, counting the stars it can no longer see, reporting the weather of a sky that has forgotten it.

Faithful thing. Patient thing. Still turning its small face upward to tell no one all is well, all is well, I am exactly where you left me.

Some nights I take the boat out and cut the engine and lie back in the hull and let the sea rock me like a signal being carried.

I don’t answer. I only listen. It seems the least that I can do for something that has never once stopped trying to come home.