SILENCES
(Dinner at the Hotel Adlon, 1936) This is
not the silence
of
things growing:
moist
dark; rich loam
stirred
by attentive grubs,
roots
wriggling with promise,
a
spume of dung and pollen
on
the air.
It
is the sound
of
ice, the polar icecap;
sterile
as salt, angular
as
hipbones, the gaps
in
our conversation
grind,
shift, freeze
to
the wind.
We
are
all blades and edges
light
bounced from crystal
brilliant
and blank
as
gemstones
beneath
our table talk
a
glacier heaves.
From Midstream (April 2002), reprinted in Watered Colors. American Independent Writers Annual Juried Prize for Best Poem, 2003.