Silence

Hearts, they shrink

Pockets swell

Everybody know.

Nobody tell.              

                              Buffy St. Marie

 

Bad enough the noise. Incoherent blather.

Worse still, the loud silence

from those who know better but dare not utter.

One Repub. said he’d rather lunch with Hannibal Lecter

than attend the party retreat.

But still, but still, sealed lips in the chambers.

Congressional multitudes gone mute.

A high decibel hush can be heard.

Spines wither in silence.

American silence, same as German silence

of ninety years ago.

 

Poets, too, are silent, aghast,

having emptied their store of words.

Hoarse from pleas, obliquities on deaf ears.

I turn to the silence of fierce gusts,

to the wrath of a Biblical sky

and finally, to the silent spring

ready to burst on the desert dance floor.