this is what you'll come to, picking about
in earth, pulling morning glory roots
like long white worms and heaping them
beside you of a morning: you will become
distant and glum, and as your wrists dry up,
caked in clay, you'll look around you, and
not your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your oak and ash,
your three brave maples rattling in the breeze,
your small house bracketed in lilacs, breathing smoke,
your woodshed stacked roof-high,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,
your geese, your ducks, your pear trees in bright bloom
will rid you of the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.
Assuming the sun will come out, which now
dog invisible tags me
fugitive on empty street
sun keeps us in spidery web
my sequins caught in silk
his eight eyes unblinking
sombre harmonies of
sluggish sound
under high notes of
whistling wind
you don't call
I'm half without other half
raw where you tore off
the telephone cord umbilical
hangs lifeless
no voice sings furry
humour
that thing's a corpse
vibrates no meanings
it just hangs there
After the search
not even a sound,
outside a hawk.
She went to fight bindweed
among cabbages, peas,
borage, arugula,
potatoes, raspberries
and such. Distracted by
thistles, as they are more
easily removed, she
worked an hour, then eased
ponderously into
her cracked resin chair, out
of breath, watching two goldfinches
having it out
on a mossy fence post.
What is not said in six
syllables is silence.
It is quiet out there now. She
Takes her hat, stick and forage bag,
Into which she slips her pruners, then
Slides her feet into green clogs, feeling
Quite exurban-agrarian, ready to look
Under brush piles and into cottonwoods --
In every place that might consent to harbor
Even a hint of birds' music. They have flown,
The silence tells her; those that haven't died.
Out along the roadside she waves to cars,
Understanding her neighbors have to drive,
Then pockets up her apples, rose hips, leaves
That now are turning away from green: cat's ear,
High mallow, chicory, plantain, sow thistle, her
Ears pricked for passing flights of geese.
Really, thinks she to herself, there ought
She sighs. What shall I say?
For beauty seems to grow
In silence, when the heart is faint and slow.
Sing, sing . . . How shall I sing?
In silent eyes, where clouds and islands gaze,
The waves bring Eros in.
I think the rustling of her clothes
Is like the sea, and she
A wild white bird,
And love is like the sighing of the sand.
Those waiting
at the breakfast
table understood —
though they had not
been told.
In white silence
my muffled boots
made rounds.
Where I looked,
I saw no tracks
but mine.
The deepening river
flows toward sea:
we may here
sit together
without words.
Couples pass, smiling
despite hard rain.
We two laughed
together, saying:
it would never do
in the house; we
are never silent!
At which thought
sudden silence.
On the therapist's couch, I wonder aloud what it would be
like to bundle all the pain I’ve ever experienced together
with any future pains, to feel them all at once and be
done with it. I mean everything, from the hangnails,
slivers, cuts, and bruises, to the pain of lost relationships
and death. I think how overwhelming it would be, how
completely unbearable. Still, if getting it all over in one
great rush was possible, would it be worth it or would it
kill me?
a river
overflows its banks...
silence