On Bainbridge Island

 In the silence of the forest floor

teeming with busyness

I can almost hear the hum of the hush. 

Mold at work; what is felled and rotting

going to mulch, under the majesty

of sentinels, two centuries-tall, 

Douglas fir, cedar and spruce.

This ecosystem even allows my trespass.

 

I am here in the overwhelm

with my deaf daughter.

Quietude is not nothing.

Perhaps this is her world

Janice can hear the screech of crows.

She hears me sneeze

keen to the sounds outside the voice range

of which I have become deafened.

The pulse of the forest.

The industry of snails and spores at work.

She hears, too, with her eyes.

There is more than mouths opening and closing,

reminding me of what goes unnoticed,

reflection of willow tree in the moss-covered lake.