Dave Bonta's poem begins with a whole town moving through water and talking to it, even wanting to become it. The image of "a dress of ten thousand hands" is strange and lovely: water as something made of countless touches, a garment woven from many people reaching out. When "the water received the water," the lines feel like a merging, as if river and townsfolk, or one body of water and another, meet and are glad to see each other.
Then the speaker steps away. Leaving off a "great skirt" suggests giving up that dress of water, or some grand, dreamlike state, and going back to ordinary business: selling a horse for a dish of herrings. It's a small, almost comic trade, and it feels like a drop from wonder into need.
The mood is dreamy and joyful at first, then wry and a little wistful. The speaker seems to admire the shared watery life but can't stay in it. Hunger, and the practical world, pull them back.