These days the silence is immense.
It is there deep down, not to be escaped.
The twittering flight of gold finches,
The three crows cawing in the distance
Only brush the surface of this silence
Full of mourning, the long drawn-out
Tug and sigh of waters never still—
The ocean out there and the inner ocean.
Only animals comfort because they live
In the present and cannot drag us down
Into those caverns of memory full of loss.
They pay no attention to the thunder
Of distant waves. My dog’s eager eyes
Watch me as I sit by the window thinking.
At the bottom of the silence what lies in wait?
Is it love? Is it death? Too early or too late?
What is it I can have that I still want?
My swift response is to what cannot stay,
The dying daffodils, peonies on the way,
Iris just opening, lilac turning brown
In the immense silence where I live alone.
It is the transient that touches me, old,
Those light-shot clouds as the sky clears,
A passing glory can still move to tears,
Moments of pure joy like some fairy gold
Too evanescent to be kept or told.
And the cat’s soft footfall on the stair
Keeps me alive, makes Nowhere into Here.
A the bottom of the silence it is she
Who speaks of an eternal Now to me.
