Dave Bonta's "Cwm" begins with a warning: one word, any word, can set off an avalanche. The speaker pictures how easily speech can unsettle things, burying people "until spring" in a tangle of limbs under snow. It sounds playful, but there's real caution in the "Careful!"
Then the mood shifts. A sound "older than language" wakes the snow and reminds it of its "true nature: to flow, to flood." Here the avalanche stops seeming purely threatening. Disturbance becomes something natural, even necessary, like language itself.
The last stanza turns to a quieter image: a sheep's bell with another sheep's tooth as its clapper. Judging by this, the poem sees our voices as borrowed and shared, made "for each other & through each other." We make noise to show where we are, even though each step is shaky. The ending feels tender and a little vulnerable. Speaking is risky, but it's how we find one another.