Two people play a simple game: one talks, the other listens. The speaker turns that ordinary exchange into a series of images. Their own words become finches, restless and chatty, landing in the listener's ear as if it were a nest. There the words grow into something new, young birds sprouting the feathers of an arrow, ready to fly again.
Then the picture flips. Now the speaker's words are fish, and the listener's words are lures, clever bait that hints at flight to a creature stuck in water. The last lines show the speaker rising toward the "ring of ripples" and the listener's "radiant ear," drawn upward by attention itself.
The mood is warm, playful, and a little tender. The speaker seems delighted by being heard, and perhaps a bit captivated, even willingly caught. The poem suggests that good listening is not passive. It shelters, shapes, and lifts what is said.