Each of the three short stanzas catches something that moves almost without sound, and the poem asks us to listen closely enough to notice it. A cat's footfall is so soft that the ground itself seems to lift and fly. A small flame is imagined as whispering as it climbs. And a bat flits through a church, its wing so light that it seems to polish the tiny bone inside the ear.
The speaker's feeling is one of quiet attention, close to wonder. Nothing is stated outright, but the images are tender and a little uncanny: the ear is both the thing that fails to hear the wing and the place where the wing seems to touch. The mood is hushed and slightly mysterious, with the church adding a note of reverence. The poem makes silence feel alive, as if the quietest things are the ones that brush against us most intimately.