Ears

Laura Riding Jackson

Misers for my sake only,
My cups of avarice
Held out to catch the rains of sound,
Hurrying the swollen rivers
Over the bedded corrugation of their bowls
Into the quiet inland sea
Where I sit watching the waters rise
And the shore creep back to me-
If they might be shattered in the wind
And broken beneath the rain,
Giving it up, like the air, to itself again;
How I might sit here happily by a low deep sea,
My own miser,
Picking over, picking over
The old alluvial memory of these high tides
For a few singing shells
To take away with me when I go.