Bells

They swell; they come promenading
into the night, at its thickest. Ding-
dong. Ding-dong. The church bells
barely visible at close distance, if where
I stand is that, if we can agree on that,
each of us listening to its melody, the way
it makes of air broken corners, the way
wind now carries it to plume and pear
and fig trees, softly. I think of it
almost as a shapelessness carrying
another shapelessness as if in promise,
or help, or
both.

Look, we're here, in the sound
and in the touch, I imagine the wind saying
of both, whistling its own version of mezzo-soprano
in belief we catch the message. She
whispers, now whistles, now sings to us in the night-time
fields of vision, but not louder--never louder--than we can
evidently, surely hear the bells' lark-clear song
over the leaves' soft
rustle.