Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 037

The Wind Chimes

Intro by Ted Kooser
12.14.2005

Painful sep­a­ra­tions, through divorce, through death, through alien­ation, some­times cause us to focus on the objects around us, often invest­ed with sen­ti­ment. Here’s Shirley Buet­tner, hav­ing packed up what’s left of a relationship. 

The Wind Chimes

Two wind chimes,
one brass and prone to anger,
one with the throat of an angel,
swing from my porch eave,
sing with the storm.
Last year I lived five months
under that shrill choir,
boxing your house, crowding books
into crates, from some pages
your own voice crying.
Some days the chimes raged.
Some days they hung still.
They fretted when I dug up
the lily I gave you in April,
blooming, strangely, in fall.
Together, they scolded me
when I counted pennies you left
in each can, cup, and drawer,
when I rechecked the closets
for remnants of you.
The last day, the house empty,
resonant with space, the two chimes
had nothing to toll for.
I walked out, took them down,
carried our mute spirits home.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From Thorns, published by Juniper Press, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Shirley Buettner, and reprinted with permission of the author. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.