Dave Bonta's "Amputee" is built from fragments, and the gaps between them are part of the effect. A sick man wakes after surgery in a high wind, gargling, and his leg is gone. The poem doesn't comment on his pain directly. It simply lays the facts down, which makes them feel stark and hard to escape.
The second stanza turns outward. The line "he will not know how to talk" suggests that loss has stripped the man of words, or that he must learn a new way of speaking about himself. Then ships come into the river, and the poet compares them to "galleries for loss." That image suggests vessels carrying absence, or spaces where loss is put on display. The last stanza seems to wonder how much these ships, and by extension a body, have carried "at so large a bargain," meaning at such a cost. The mood is quiet, bewildered and sorrowful, with grief widening from one man's body to the world around him.