The Shell
from Winter Horse by Nellie Hill
Reverberations hum across fields
and tops of trees like flights of birds
I catch with my net of reckless hearing.
I hear what I want. I make what I can
of wave lengths.
Now I’m the beach and my skin the sand
rolled and kissed and blasted
into glass that separates filaments
of imagined knowledge from the real
and consoles the viewer, calms
the listener. The empty shell
really holds the ocean.
Nellie Hill’s short fiction and poetry has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals. Her most recent chapbook is My Daily Walk (Pudding House, 2008). She lives in Berkeley, California.
Categories: Chapbook Finalists 2010
Excellent. ‘Reverberations hum across the fields/” Great first line. It holds my attention all the way through . Lovely sounds: kissed, blasted, glass and then calms, consoles, empty.