Mercifully, the poem "Wind" is not a six-verse ode to having gas, or an extended euphemism for a fart. So you can quit your giggling right now. Or… can you?

Yes—yes, you can. Actually, we should feel stupid for even thinking that this joke would make you more likely to read the poem. The truth is that this poem's not about "breaking wind," but it is about a wind that breaks things. Beyond that, though, this is just a normal, everyday wind—you know, the kind that blows your hair back as you stand on the beach in a commercial for coconut water.

"Wind" is one of the centerpieces of Ted Hughes's first book of poems, The Hawk in the Rain, published in 1957. When it was published, W.H. Auden said, "Woah! If this poetry book were mashed potatoes—I wouldn't be getting seconds, I'd be getting thirds!"

Okay, so he didn't actually say that (but he could have thought it). However, he was one of the judges who did give it first prize in a competition that allowed it to get published by Harper and Row. Ol' Teddy Hughes was ready for the big time. He went on to have an illustrious career—though one partly fraught with controversy, after the suicide of Hughes's wife, the famous poet Sylvia Plath.

"Wind" bears the characteristic markings of Hughes, one of the most famous and respected British poets of the second half of the twentieth century. It fits in with his other classic nature poems—intensely observed, with a sense of the otherness, power, majesty, wildness, bleakness, and the indifference of the natural world.

Chances are, you've experienced the wind at some point. But, just in case you think you haven't, allow us to explain: if you've ever been walking down the street and suddenly felt like the air was moving around you, knocking the ice cream cone out of your hands and leaving it smashed and melting on the ground, splattering chocolatey gooey drops all over you—we can assure you that there was just a limited cause for concern. You were just hit by a gust of "wind." Yep, it's a very common, natural phenomenon. If you happen to be living on some windless planet somewhere, you're just going to have to trust us on this one.

In Ted Hughes's poem "Wind," the dude really goes bananas over this stuff. We're not saying he loves wind—at least, he doesn't love love it—but he's pretty strongly affected by it. He's awed and inspired. The wind in Hughes' poem is pretty intense. It makes stones scream, dents eyeballs, and hits magpies, among other things.

But what's the point? Why sit around describing wind in a poem? Why is Hughes getting his jollies this way? Maybe by seeing the metaphors hidden in the wind, Hughes is actually realizing more about the wind, and about what it really signifies or means, than someone who just says, "Oh, it's windy today. Blargh." By meditating on Nature and its deeper metaphors, Hughes learns to see what's really there. He's not just spraying a layer of poetic talk over reality—he's getting at the truth, the really… um, real reality.

In a way, "Wind" is a case study in what poets (well, most poets) do. They look at the world and see the different levels of meaning hidden in it—the different images and correspondences evoked by a single object or a single event. To use a metaphor of our own, the wind isn't just a flat tortilla—it's a burrito of meaning, packed with savory, unexpected metaphors and doused in a spicy secret sauce of world knowledge.