4.29.2005

hush (a perfect example of onomatopoeia)

once like chimes i heard the three ton feat of silence
bridge the gaps of words clinking like spoons hanging
from the limb of an old southern tree and losing rusty powder
with every breeze that stirred and swooned up every clunk

laden or heavy and careful we bring our faces into the presence
of a Godlike quiet that sparkles like light and fades like evening and
drops like wet sand from the bulging hands of a toddler at the beach
with clingy and wrinkled swimming trunks that cover knobby knees
with a wet and filmy layer of nylon, or whatever swimming suits are made of

first, however is the noise and the clatter of voices that sound
rickety tinny thin snappy plastic rattling tapping or dripping
and the high sound of the television left on that my ears don't hear
but that pricks the back of my neck like an unhealing acupuncture

but i know that after all this noise i will find sounds that mimic silence
the swooshing and retreating waves of the ocean will whisper and soothe
and melt away as if they were not making any sound at all,
or the breathing of the universe caught up in the rise and fall of
this lover's chest, so soundless and yet so full of deep tones like the feeling
of far off thunder that you feel in your toes,

all these sounds that pull on an invisible hooded cloak made up of
quiet things, imitations of silence, betterments of a world bereft of sound,
inklings of a purest ringing sound of silence to cradle and coddle this soul,
the one that sits in its rocking chair and looks to be soothed to rest.

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