No words.
No rhymes, no poeming tonight,
just this blank space,
this white page,
stretching endlessly –
no trail of letters, staggering home,
no tears. No whispering
at the back, no shouting out,
no speeches.
Find me a space here,
tucked into the silence.
For dVerse, where we are saying “no” in No-vember.
The bush with white flowers
is sometimes heavy
with the sound of bees
and the thrush
and the robin
and the blackbird
spill their song
like champagne
over-flowing
and even the rooks
make a comfortable sound
and children
in the playground
and the midnight bark
of the fox
and the fly insistent
against the window,
seeking light light light
and the lap of the ocean
on a shingle shore
and the green of a leaf
and a flower unfurling –
everything alive is singing
and I am singing – the blood
in my veins sings,
and my heart sings,
and my fingers sing
and the electric surges
of my nerves are songs
and the breath in my lungs
is a song is a song is a song
and I fear the silence.
Ingrid is hosting at earthweal. This is for her.
There are times when it’s enough to not say a word,
to empty myself even of the warm breath,
to let all my thoughts rise free as a singing bird –
sometimes there are no songs fit to be sung –
I must lock my words up behind my lips,
I must cage my speech, tie up my unruly tongue,
and sometimes silence is a pillow I can rest upon,
a wave that endlessly carves, reforms, and carves the beach,
a bird rising, rising, and silence the wind it rides on.
Laura is hosting at dVerse for Tuesday poetics. She’s given us a fascinating prompt, inspired by traditional Welsh poetry. We’ve been given a choice of 3 line sets, to make into a series of 3 tercets.
The whole house smells of silence.
The air tastes dull, as grey as dust,
and the rooms are still,
waiting for the clatter of feet
down the stairs – late for school,
for work, for that first date;
there is no laughter in the kitchen:
no clatter of plates, no sizzling hiss
of bacon. No clink of cup
set on saucer. There is no steam,
no rolling boil. There is no
argument about whose turn it is,
no joking, no slamming of doors –
the doors hang as if they’re made of wood,
the windows shine as if they’re made of glass,
the piano’s just another piece of furniture
in a house that’s full of emptiness.
I think you’ll let your fingers wander
over those keys. You’ll find a tune –
some rare old mountain tune, some echo
of a starman’s song, but all the notes you play
will glisten in the air, unmoving,
stilled by silence.
Dwight Roth is hosting at dVerse tonight, and we are considering silence. Shhh…
Sarah writes poems 