Quiet

         

Quiet

           

…I want to take

a vow of silence, every word

is a young mouse growing in my throat

stretching his paws

trying out his pink nails.

                                    Philip Levine

                                    Ask the Roses

Silence the way the maples, early or late,

            and for no reason,

            let go

Silence the way the cloistered, her thumb

on the last sorrow,

            goes into mystery

Silence the seeing an old dear friend

            look in to the twenty gone years

            to rock the newborn

Silence the ash that falls open in last night’s

            fire, and after a heavy rain, is still

            dry

Silence the way today, and every day,

            a baby, solid on the bed, falling

            to sleep.

Silence the three piano feet pressed

            against the key, to be felt

            and let into the room.

Silence in the lips silence

in the fingertips silence

in the areola

in the thigh-sigh and spine

in the story-stone in the sacral bone-bowl

            the subsequent yoke in and through that bone

                        (the first is the clavical you’ll agree)

            whose hips between is a loose sewn fillet,

            opening like a rosary, or a spile tap

            and that first drop of sap

            like it all was all decided 

            ahead of time

silence between the years we’d left

one another and then, yes,

            yes, met again when the tree

            the rosary

            the baby....