Now in silence, mute, a place still quiet
within reason, ear-protected, I hear
the flow and pump of blood. My loud
and your soft heart beat out as dance
stun and shush us where equipoise
and noise don’t mix. Unsteadying, a diet
of uninvited cell phone monologues, big
overseer helicopters, TV screech and
media preachments, ambulance, paramedic
rescue shrieks, the way too-trafficked
hum and squall and scream of barriers
that mask the sound of handcuff clicks.
Anointing to me, annoying to some, silence –
soundtrack to our native zone – serenades.
As every trembling star and particle feeds
on space, so every song and utterance
leans against silence: a resource so
unheard of, we can’t help but kill it. Dead.
The silence of a smug, unthinking nation
— that’s something else again. Citizen
as pathogen. I write through those ears,
too, from silence breathed as nourishment
that charges and changes. Consider the kiss
in which we find and switch each other on
— the silence I write from recharges this.
