The Oval Window

Kamea Lessoway

Tangaroa roars, disturbing the air
Condensate. Rarefact. 
Repeat ad infinitum… or at least, until you get here.

What’s that, you say? You just touched my tympanic membrane? I did not consent.
His roar transforms, moving through my bones
(Yes, they’re the smallest. Take that to trivia night – I’m staying in. Long COVID. But 
thanks for the invite)
The roar reaches my oval window. No knock, it just enters and starts bouncing on my basilar membrane. 
“Hey sodium, potassium, calcium; you three have potential. This is your threshold. Cross it.”
He plays my tonotopic organisation like a keyboard.
Now his roar is electricity, commanding use of my glucose
lighting up my auditory cortices. 

The wind calms. He stops moving. 
Silence, where once there was sound. 
My anatomy, once again my own.

The Science

This poem traces the transformation of sound from atmospheric vibration to neural signal. Beginning with the crash of a wave (a “roar” from Tanagroa, the Māori god of the sea and winds), it follows the journey of a sound wave: a longitudinal wave (condensation and rarefaction in air), a mechanical or pressure wave (through the vibration of the tympanic membrane and middle ear ossicles), a fluid wave (fluid mechanics of the cochlea), a travelling wave (along the Basilar membrane), and finally the electrochemical cascade of auditory transduction (action potentials, which are themselves also waves). These action potentials continue up the auditory neural pathway, ultimately lighting up the auditory cortices, and it is not until the wave reaches the cortices that we hear.

“The oval window” is both anatomical and symbolic: a literal membrane between middle and inner ear, and a metaphor for the threshold between external stimulus and internal experience. Woven through this anatomical process is a reflection on auditory vulnerability, showing how sound, especially in the context of hypersensitivity or sensory dysregulation, can feel less like perception and more like intrusion.

The Poet

Kamea's ChatGPT says of writing a bio in the third person: "It's the kind of impossible task that makes poets either drink heavily or switch to writing tweets." Kamea does neither, but occasionally attempts to express the breath that almost speaks through words, music, and paint. Kamea is a clinical audiologist who lives at the beach in Aotearoa/New Zealand. If the ol’ mitochondria are having a particularly good day, they might even post on Bluesky: @thepoetryofscience.

Next poem: The space for which I travel… by Geraint Rhys Whittaker