The poem opens with a grim idea: the sea pays out "wages," as if it were an employer, and whether the weather is fair or foul, the bill comes due. What it takes is described as "the undoing / of thousands they could not find." The speaker seems to be thinking about people lost at sea, so many that they can't be located or counted individually.
Then the poem shifts from the vast to the tiny. Instead of naming the dead, it lists what they leave behind: "a missed church, / the last reading of the night." These are ordinary rituals and habits, and the poem suggests that a disaster erases those too. The ellipsis at the end leaves the thought hanging, as though the list could go on forever.
The mood is quiet and sombre. The speaker doesn't shout or describe the storm itself. Instead, the restraint and the trailing ending create a feeling of grief that has no clear edge, and a loss too large to finish describing.