This week, unlike the past couple of weeks, is relatively calm. It’s a brief lull in the storm of summer. Pretty soon, I’m going to be heading to New York for Greyfox Bluegrass Festival and then I’m taking a woodworking class and then I’m going to Maine Fiddle camp. Not to mention working, writing, and performing with the band.
As nice as it is to have a quiet week, it leaves me uncertain as to what I should write about today. I can’t write about my exiting week, because the highlight of my week will probably end up being having enough free time to watch TV before going to bed. I suppose I could follow up on the Period Post with another feminist post, but too be honest, I’m feeling a bit too lazy for that right now.
So, here is a poem for your enjoyment, written in February of this year:
The Promise Poem and the Poem Promised
2/22/14
A poem sits at the forefront of my mind. It leaves a warm, cozy feeling in my frontal lobe, a cat curled before the fire, a babe asleep in arms. And like that babe, I am afraid to let the poem go, to write that poem down. I know the words by heart, I recite them to myself to fill the quiet spaces after the music has stopped and my thoughts tick too loudly in the chamber of my brain. I think I must write the poem soon, let it go so that I might keep it. I would hate to smother it, to drive it away with my clinging. cling too close, cling too long and soon I will hold nothing but the memory of poetry and that warmth will be gone, replace with empty coldness, the negative of warmth, the memory of it, beating in my breast like funeral drums. I want to save my poem from that fate. I will write it soon, Maybe tomorrow or the day after. Soon though, I promise. I promise.
2/23/14
A poem as promised, not further delayed. It’s no longer mine to keep.
Can he hear it when he walks through the door?
Can he hear the silence?
Can he hear the absence?
Can he hear all the layers of little sounds
that combine to make silence?
The rush of hot water streaming from the faucet to turn my hand ruddy.
The occasional crack of popping sap from the logs in the fire.
The tick of the clock.
Does he realize, upon entering the house,
how very loud the silence is?
Now that there’s no music.
Now that melody has faded to be heard behind ears.
Words sung
over and over and over
in a loop inside my head.
Can he hear that?
That noise reverberating through my skull?
Or is it just me?
Alone with my thoughts
and the music in my head
and the silence that is not silence
but layer upon layer of sound.
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