A Song of Silence

It was long ago but that silence comes back like a

soft-whistled lullaby with clean air floating in after

and I could just give myself over to dreams – and see things

not just in the clouds but down along foggy roads

and in shadows of half-silent streams trickling in the woods

and across the overgrown field grasses that should have had horses

to chew them down all summer and now in motionless waves

they lean together in late fall – shoulder to shoulder like drunks

turned out of a tavern after their lost Sunday night football game

– still shouting over the umpteenth sack of their high-priced quarterback – and then shoulder to shoulder in the parking lot

they stare up at the cockeyed moon smiling sideways

– which is what a moon will do for drunks –

until they break apart to find their own pickups to drive home

– or maybe a couple of miles down the road one of them

drives through a fence and into an overgrown field

of static waves and now the moon has turned to bone

and stares down with a single blind eye

while the drunk at the wheel tries to puzzle out

who to call for help and in the silence starts to doze off

Or maybe the moon can’t quite believe this mass of scattered lights

like measles upon the dark world – tiny stars to mock the moon –

a scattered panoply springing out of the mushroom evening

– as if someone needs these many nightlights in every house

to keep all the alligators back beneath the beds

And some of us can’t get to sleep but lie here

listening to the distant thrum of road noise over against

coyotes yipping in high trills somewhere in the woods

and frogs serenading each other down in the swamp

their singing carried on the breeze

along with the faint trickling of a stream over stones

or an occasional hoot owl swooping in

the hush of these embellishing the road noise

allowing a small space for the soul to take a slow breath

in the wonderful unimportance of this one given moment

even with a constant road noise because

there’s always someone who has to go to work

or get a loaf of bread or a carton of milk for the kids …

            – Eugene Marckx, November 11, 2022