In The Wind’s Singing
voices are in the wind’s singing
T. S. Eliot
The sound of the wind beneath the door
is nothing new, and yet tonight
I feel compelled to listen to its music.
It sings of a rickety stile, a gate that creaks
and fields where blackberries hang in clusters,
meandering over miles of dry stone walls.
I hear the drone of far-off bees and bluebottles,
the swish of a butterfly net and a sudden whoosh
of breath, scattering the fuzz on a dandelion clock.
Footsteps echo down a moonlit path
where hedgehogs snuffle in the undergrowth
and the call of a tawny owl bewitches.
Something more than memory is moving
under whispers of cicadas in the wild grass
enveloping the long-abandoned railway track.
Something deeper than history is stirring
in the rhythmic plop of pebbles skimmed on water,
the song of the sea in a beachcombed shell.