Today’s wind has no tongue.

It scours these rocks as it did yesterday

and indeed before human ears ever evolved

or got intelligently designed to listen

to its dire shrieking. It’s hard, however, to not hear

messages for us in such howls and moans

and gusty gasps. But, alas, even those huge

sucking sighs amount to nothing but suggestions.

O, amidst this voiceless noise, we yearn for signs

and, lo, here is one. Molten basalt, it says,

black as crows that hop upon it now, muscled up

through cracks in bubble-gum pink granite

and since black grinds faster than pink, midnight

gullies deepen into crashing sea. Look up

from this sign to the wonder it foretold: Boom

goes flying spume. “Yes, but what does it mean?”

we cry, though wind snatches words away

to mingle them in a babble all its own.

William Hathaway’s hard-edged poems have appeared frequently in national periodicals over the last few decades, and in seven books, the most recent of which is “Sightseer,” published by Canio’s Editions of Sagaponack, N.Y. He lives in Surry.

Uni-Verse offers a poem grown from the experience of Maine bimonthly in Monday’s Discovering section.