There was a time when stillness
meant nothing to me.
Once silence meant lack of sound;
Fall came once a year.
I danced, redcheeked, each year's first snow,
tongue out to taste each flake's welcome sting.
I laughed, distinct from nature's cycles,
a scrap of wonder floating in a torrent
of sorrow I couldn't grasp.
That laugh, mouth open, sums up my past.
I craved fulfillment, to shallow to know
I could never be fully filled.
A sound associated with silence
delicately etches the seconds
as they fly past,
snowflakes of lost bliss
that drift into a list of memories.
This white hush of rushing blood
carves it seamless tears
in blank empty spaces that echo silence
where beginnings come to an end;
I speak of the hissing silences of loss
that trap hollowness in sound.
This liquid whisper is the music of the realm I dwell in.
It is the answer to all questions
not said--
and so much has been left unexpressed.
The certainties of yesterday
twist like smoke into laughter.
I am a shooting star--
whispering through the atmosphere;
I am a snake--
slithering through the musty depths
of yesterday's passions;
I will answer those questions you never asked.
Isn't there a future to dream about?
In it fat snowflakes
crash to the blacktop and perish,
and vulcanized rubber
rolls hissing through their remains.
Then the air that stings exposed flesh,
the damp, turgid suppression
of sound absorbed and lost
in the dingy snowdrifts.
Memories refuse me
a moment's quiet.
You know the rest.
You saw the pleasure sent
scintillating through my nerves
as passion eroded resolve,
and I offered yourself to me
in the twisted reason of convenience.
The wordless joys you squeezed
out without question blessed
our pleasures then--
but when embers blink out,
the darkness resumes.
The rest is silence.
