Here Is an Ear Hear

By Victor Hernández Cruz

Is the ocean really inside seashells
                     or is it all in your mind?
                                                —PICHON DE LA ONCE

Behold and soak like a sponge.   
I have discovered that the island of Puerto Rico   
is the ears of Saru-Saru, a poet reputed to have lived   
in Atlantis. On the day that the water kissed and   
embraced and filled all the holes of that giant   
missing link, this bard’s curiosity was the greatest   
for he kept swimming and listening for causes.   
He picked up rocks before they sank and blew   
wind viciously into them. Finally he blew so hard   
into a rock that he busted his ear drums; angry,   
he recited poems as he tried turning into a bird   
to fly to green Brazil. His left ear opened up   
like a canal and a rock lodged in it. Rock attracts   
rock and many rocks attached to this rock. It got   
like a rocket. His ear stayed with it in a horizontal   
position. Finally after so many generations he got   
to hear what he most wanted: the sounds made by flowers   
as they stretched into the light. Behold, I have   
discovered that the island of Puerto Rico is the   
ears of Saru-Saru.

Copyright Credit: Victor Hernández Cruz, "Here Is an Ear Hear" from Maraca: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2000. Copyright © 2001 by Victor Hernandez Cruz. Reprinted with the permission of Coffee House Press. www.coffeehousepress.org.
Source: Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000 (Coffee House Press, 2001)