Jerry Mason
The Wind As Poetry
after Stevens
A mad ear cocked to a conch shell
thinks it hears the sum of seas.
Sun-trammeled, the listener mines
this tone, thing of thin geometry.
What else but the wind cradled
in a pink enamel horn
could make of hearing
a long promise in the mind.
For a week now, on the shabby coast,
shells have skidded back
into the sea. Corpulent winds
have squeezed into hunching streets.
Say less of the bobbing trees,
the swirling and parceled wet.
The sound is our concern, the
spiral yearnings of the ear.
Strokes of a fluid hammer, braiding and
unbraiding quests, else an animal
loosed and raging for rest.
Jerry Mason’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, American Letters and Commentary, Mudfish, and other journals. He is currently putting together work for his first collection.